Brown hills open across a plateau that undulates towards the distant volcanic hills. In the mid-morning, we leave the highway connecting Kenya with Uganda at Narok and enter the dry plains of the Masaai Mara National Park. Children run and wave behind the SUV as we drive through small settlements and cattle remain oblivious to our presence across the red soiled road. Six hours since leaving the dullness of the golf course in Naivasha, we enter a paradise hidden in the middle of absolute nothing. Like a diamond found in the Mara River, we have reached Ngerende Lodge.
At a steep one thousand U.S. dollars per night, it is set to become one of the most promoted lodges in the reserve by the Tourist Board and today, as we finally get off the car, we receive a typical Masaai welcome from tall warriors in red gowns jumping and gutturally singing on Swahili.
Few places in the world will be this specially design in the wilderness, few places in the world will make one feel so beautifully inadequate. On arrival, we are treated to the sweetness of a watermelon cocktail and the kindness of our own personal butler. He takes our small pieces of luggage and direct us to our cabin set atop the Mara River.
Traditional division between man and nature seem to have been broken and the cabin, missing a fourth wall, clings over a river bank where hippos playfully nap. The afternoon breeze affectionately refreshes a cabin lit with the natural light of the savannah and the bed, centrepiece of the whole setting, is covered in Masaai motifs over Egyptian cotton.
Our butler has prepared a light lunch for us and, once we have washed it down with the finesse of the best coffee beans in Kenya, we are set for a game drive.
We see many things when we travel. We hang onto the ones that make us smile when we remember them, we forget the ones that did not make an impact on us. There are also things that we see, we experience, we remember and we relish on for years. Perhaps through our entire life as a tale to be told decades later, a tale set to flash in front of us before we finally say goodbye to the world. This is one of them.
‘It can get very cold in the Masaai Mara. A thunderstorm is taking us by surprise in the daunting and dramatic way only done in the African plains. Indomitable and omnipresent. Charged with the raw anger of the bush, yet only fleeting enough to remind us of the brightness of the day ahead. A cleansing ritual in the wilderness.
We board a leather-seated Land Cruiser and are driven through an almost lunar landscape of low grass and lonely trees flanked by both the dark swirl of rainclouds and a golden sunset breaking across the horizon.
Black buffaloes graze next to herds of photogenic zebras, clumsy-looking giraffes, hungry wildebeests, gracious antelopes and sleepy hyenas.
A rainbow forms around a family of elephants and the fresh day turns into a night filled with the moist of the heavy rain. A night also filled with the torrid tension of two colleagues that have exchanged stares in Ballyfin, have shared conversations in Cork and are now looking over the same sunset in one of the most perfect settings in the universe.
Upon arrival in the lodge and the cabin, our bath is set. Candlelit, rose-petaled, luscious. In the warm water, wet skin touches in chills of lavender soap, it touches in the tense comfort of two bodies resting over each other while the world around seems to completely vanish, a dark world only lit by the candles around the freestanding white bath, a silenced world only interrupted by human breathing and the sound of hippos splashing in the river beneath.’
A coffee pot and cookies are brought by our butler before the sun rises. A lone hippo returns to the river after a night of grazing in the pastures. Shouts in Swahili are heard through the static of the radio and pressing the gas, we are rushed across the plain to a sleepy pride. We are told to be silent and watch as a family of four cubs and three lionesses approach the Land Rover in an oblivious step as they call their nightly hunt a day and look for a place to rest from the sun.
The morning sunshine dries up the moist of the nocturnal rain and fills the air with that intoxicating wet soil smell that only nature can provide. We pack our bags and leave a perfectly lined staff upon departure. A staff worth of a true Masaai paradise.
It takes five local Masaai villages and terrific navigation skills to arrive to Ol Seki Hemingways Lodge right in the heart of the Naboisho Conservancy Area. We are welcomed into the lodge by a tall British woman. Fluent in Swahili, she proudly introduces the locally sourced amenities of our canvas-and-rope cabin before we are gathered around a long wooden table and meet fellow guests for a lunch banquet.
Rain falls as it is a habit in the Mara afternoons. We are driven into a canyon that fills with the noise of distance waterfalls. Atop the round plateau, we finally devise a pride of lions resting over the warm and steamy rocks. A setting worth of the best Lion King movie: a cub pounces around the lionesses and playfully pull their ears, four lions rest on their side and flaunt their manes to the light breeze, silent and vigilant. A fifth lion stands and roars to be heard from here to the Serengeti, for he is the King of Pride Rock.
At dinner and over the long wooden table, wine, beef stew and tea flow in amounts as copious as our travel anecdotes, our excitement for the day, and our excitement for things to come.
It is with sadness that we are driven to our last game drive of the trip the next morning. The Land Cruiser rattles through narrow and wet pathways as the sun appears through the dry trees. I spot something moving in the bushes and suddenly everyone in the car remains in silence.
Bright yellow and black spots. The eyes of a lonely female squint from beneath the thick bushes and her green eyes lock with ours. The seconds seem to freeze as we quietly stare at each other until she enters her comfort zone and slowly moves away from the bush and walks next to the car. We have finally spotted a leopard and with that, we have completed the Big Five.
Towards the hills, an eagle watchfully sits on the top of a tree and small jackals scream their lungs out in alert. We are rewarded by the sight of a morning giraffe rush hour at the top of the hill, sixty minutes before we bid farewell to the African plain and are driven to the airstrip to board our Cessna Grand Caravan back to Nairobi.
Bags are loaded by Masaai locals and two airplanes landing at the same time stir clouds of red dust. In a five-minute rush, we are strapped to our seats, the door closes and the front engine roars out and above the Masaai Mara in between white clouds of mist and turbulence.
From the plane, the flat vastness of lone trees slowly climbs up the rim of the volcanic belt and collides with the high Nairobi plain. The little airplane flies over a Nairobi that looks like a miniature chaos beneath and the wings rocks in between air traffic, crosswinds and terrain alerts.
There is not much time in Nairobi and a private driver takes us from Wilson to Jomo Kenyatta across motorways of clogged traffic.
At the International Airport, a hangar has become the Domestic terminal after a fire two months ago destroyed the premises completely. An old box TV broadcasts the BBC as we board the plane and for the next hour, I am only distracted by the towns breaking through the clouds as we descend over a mangrove into Moi Airport.
Little did I know that a terrorist attack happened as we were stuck in traffic in Nairobi and people were taken hostage and murdered as we flew East to the Indian Ocean coast.
Upon arrival in Mombasa, I reply to texts from worried family and friends. I text messages of relief with a mixture of sadness for Nairobi, wistfulness for the Masaai Mara and relief for the Indian Ocean coast.
THE FLYING CAMBA 