Soaking up the wild at Olare Kempinski

I went to think in the Maasai Mara. I wanted a place with very few trees. I don’t think I can think in the Amboseli with all those trees. I also don’t think I can think in a forest in Mt Kenya with it’s thickness and looming darkness and rain.

I absolutely love the beach, but I wanted something different other than the moaning sea and the smell of sun-beaten sand.

I wanted a place with only a scattering of Acacia trees and an endless patchy landscape running into a skyline beyond. Somewhere where the wind roamed unhindered and the animals peered from shrubs. God’s own land.

During the trip to the Mara in an Airkenya flight (the Mara is their flagship destination, they fly in three times a day, into 10 airtstrips) I sat next to a gentleman who was going to— and you will never guess this— Migori! I was fascinated. Migori!

Special breakfast

He asked me what I was going to do down in the Mara. I wanted to tell him, “Oh, just sit by the beach and eat calamari”. But I didn’t because he was a nice man with an honest face. I remember telling him that I was going to think and him smiling and nodding as if he completely understood that concept.

Oh, another thing, if you are going to go down to Mara you’re better off using a small aircraft. On my way there, I went in a small Airkenya plane, about half a dozen seater or so, but on the way back we got onto a much bigger one.

The experience of the first plane was 20 times better than the second one. Why? Because the small planes offer you a more intimate interaction with the wild. You see more.

You are more exposed to the beauty outside (because you are flying at a lower altitude) as you whiz over a breathtaking landscape of the Mara.

There is also an underlying camaraderie amongst passengers. You are a small group, you feel like you are the chosen ones to see the wondrous beauty below.

Two lady pilots flew us there; they reminded me of the famous Bush Pilots I met at the Okavango Delta; adventurous looking and free! Plus they handed us menthol sweets and said tongue-in-cheek, “this is our special breakfast..” An excited Japanese couple squealed in derision.

I stayed at the Olare Kempinski in Olare Motorogi Conservancy, 35,000 acres of prime grassland, riverine forests and acacia woodland. The Olare Kempinski is like something out of a Hemingway book; 12 traditionally styled luxury tents, very quaint, rustic but also posh in a way that is restrained. I was amazed at its massive four-post bed.

A bed so large it can sleep four adults. I did some thinking; mostly by the swimming pool, or lying outside my tent, by the Ntiakitiak River, that meanders around the camp.

The silence there is golden. The birds chirped overhead on trees. (And to think I was avoiding trees). I sunbathed the whole morning, the sun in my face, thinking about life.

I heard the constant knock-knock sound of a woodpecker incessantly pecking away at a trunk. He went on for so long I wondered if it gets a headache from all that racket at the end of the day. Isn’t God amazing?

He creates a bird, not any bigger than your folded fist and this feathery thing knocks against a hard trunk with its beak all the time and still not suffer migraines.

I Googled this fascinating bird (there is Wi-Fi in the camp), and learnt that their rhythmic drumming is a message to other woodpeckers that is his territory.

They also knock on wood to carve holes in trees to create nest cavities or reach insects. The louder your knock as a woodpecker the better you are amongst your peers. Atta bird.

Intimate dinner

I remember the Japanese couple in the plane asking if we will see lions and I told them that the last time I was in the Mara I saw so many lions it was like seeing cows graze.

They stared at me disbelievingly with saucer eyes. (OK, as big as a Japanese eyes can get, really). Although we didn’t end up in the same camp, I bet they saw the pride of 12 lions we saw the first evening. And the two large ones we saw the next evening. And cheetahs. And wildebeests.

I doubt you can go to the Mara and not see a lion or a horse of other wild animals. You would be the unluckiest human being on earth.

I’m not fascinated by wild animals as such. Fine, the first 10 minutes of seeing a lion I can’t sit still, but after that I sort of get bored. I want to see a leopard though. I have never seen a leopard in the wild.

Dinner is intimate at the lodge. The staff are friendly. I asked for chapatis to be made for me (I’m addicted to those things) and they were gracious enough to make me some. For two nights.

What else can I say about a camp that makes me chapatis? What more can you say?