Kenya + Tanzania advice

[Tech Tonics]

My daughter has an internship in Kenya all summer. At the end of her project, we (wife and 16yo other-daughter) are going to visit and join her.

Looking for recommendations.

Current tentative plan involves Hell’s Gate, a masai village called majimoto, time in Zanzibar (stone town and where else?), and a safari in Tsavo West NP.

We’d love to hear any advice about the area.

She’s going to be with other students in Mumias. We may or may not join her there.




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[Tech Tonics]

Bump. Anyone?


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[climberevan]

I'll ask Ms CE. She lived in Nairobi for about a decade. And a friend of mine was just there climbing Kili etc. He has a baller budget though, so maybe not super relevant.

[chaka]

Ngorongoro is pretty amazing.

[dunfree]

Walk the beaches of lamu eating marmalade, drinking pink gin, and reading the poetry of Rupert Brooke.

[alpinevibes]

My wife and I went to Kenya in August of 2017 and spent two weeks in Kenya and another 10 days in northern Mozambique in Pemba/Ibo Island. We were there during and after the 2017 Kenyan presidential elections, which had previously resulted in violence and riots over the previous decade. So we chose to keep our travel and choice more "up-market" compared to our usual style and we'd talked with our guide company about bailing to Tanzania if shit hit the fan while we were trekking. That said, nothing happened and we really enjoyed our experience in both places. Kenya I would definitely go back to again and here's a Mini TR for our trip:


We spent our first night with some expat Brit friends who were living in Karen and she drove us into Nairobi National Park, which was super cool. A small but plentiful national park full of game (lions, rhino, etc - everything) that you can self-drive, right next to the City.





We then went to climb Mt Kenya with a guide to the Batian summit, which was a 5 day/60km trek with one day to climb the alpine route. Super cool, beautiful, empty and amazing experience. Maybe ~50 people a year summit Batian, Mt Kenya's true summit (17,057') as it's a 18 pitch alpine climb. There are about 10 certified climbing guides who work on the route, all native Kenyan's, and we hired one of them+porters for the trip.

Leaving the Banda huts on our first morning:


Hiking through the Lobelia groves around 13,000'


Breakfast from Camp at 14,000'


Sunrise over the tarn behind camp:


The view down to Shipton's camp, from Point Lenana, 16,355' - a sub-summit which most trekkers consider the "summit" of Mt Kenya:


The view down to the Lewis Glacier, Mt Kenya's largest remaining glacier that has shrunk 90+% in the last 100 years. Featured in Warren Miller 20 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXJ9Egjtu8I


We spent the night at Shipton's camp, a large concrete structure at 13,800'. We woke up at 4am to hike 1500' up the moraine to start the alpine climb to the summit of Batian: https://www.cumbres.cz/site_media/im...ian/4-Mapa.jpg


Our guide leading up to 5.8 trad in hiking boots. A bit above my level:




We summited an hour behind schedule and it was snowing at 17,000' on the summit ridge. We rapped in the dark with only two headlamps. It was a super long, exhausting day but a great adventure.


We slept poorly then got up to hike ~20mi out the valley and down the road to the exit of the park. Feet were hammered.



We came back to Nairobi for a night then got picked up to go out to the Masai Mara for four nights in a low-budget safari camp. It was rustic but we had a great driver and fellow visitors and we saw a lot of game. Our camp was outside the park and next to a village which was cool in its own way, but not as plush as the camps inside the park.




The Mara was incredible and we saw tons of animals at a scale that was very different from when we had done safaris in South Africa.













Unlike the Defender/LC76 wet dream that the media conjures about safaris, a majority of the safari vehicles were HiAce vans, many with pop tops. Very sweet.










We spent a few more days back in Karen after that and had met a cool Kenyan couple on Mt Kenya who hooked us up with an AirBnb and showed us around town a bit, which was a nice change. we Ubered around and went to Karen Blixen museum, Giraffe Centre, Sheldrick Wildlife Trust: Haven for Elephants & Rhinos, the Escarpment out past Ngong and some nice restaurants and cafes. Karen is very very different than Nairobi or Kenya-proper for that matter: it's very wealthy and very white.



Mangrove oysters from Kenya's east coast at a posh restaurant



After that we flew to Dar es Salaam and then transferred to Pemba in Mozambique. Pemba was cool and we had some nice beach time.



Then we got driven up north a few hours and caught a dhow out to Ibo Island where we spent 4-5 nights. Ibo was a big Portugese slave trading spot but the island has slowly fallen into ruin and become a sleepy backpackers spot. Super cool.














All-in-all a great trip and we'd love to get back to Kenya and explore more, including the coast. Mozambique was very unique and interesting, but that area was devastated by a typhoon a few years later and most of the northern area is rife with Islamist terrorist and violence.