(The first part of this travelogue is here).
On the third day after we arrived in Nairobi, we were scheduled to leave for Masai Mara. Our driver, Joseph (“Jesus’s father?” the LO asked, when she heard his name) arrived early in the morning, and we set off a little after 7 AM.
It was the first working day after the long Christmas break, so lots of people were out and about on the streets: children scurrying to school (Joseph said the usual school timings are 7 to 4: long!), people piling into minibuses called matats, and just generally a lot of bustle. We’d soon left behind Nairobi, with its skyscrapers and its tall trees, and were into the wooded mountains. The highway was lined with dense stands of trees, some crowded with yellow or pink flowers.
In between, there were villages and little towns, and so many things that reminded me of India: Ashok Leyland, Mahindra and Airtel signs, of course, but also banana plantations, brightly-painted houses, and baboons by the side of the road (Joseph said that travellers in matats pitch out ears of half-eaten maize or bits of half-chewed sugarcane, which is what attracts them). I saw little garages that simply call themselves ‘puncture’ (a step up from India, where I’ve seen them labelled ‘puncher’), hotels which are actually no more than restaurants—and ‘viewpoints’, places that offer a panoramic view of some specially spectacular landscape.
A ‘viewpoint’, on the Nairobi-Narok highway.
Dustedoff 