Spot of the Week

There are those who think the plains are at their best dry, dusty and yellow. They are wrong.

On Christmas eve, a cold wind blew in from the distant escarpment and the curmudgeonly Gregory arrived late into camp. As he lay in his bed, disquieted by feverish dreams he was visited by a small pointy-eared cat-like creature. It leapt onto his bed looked him in the eye and said ‘Gregory, come with me.’

Don’t you just hate it, you queue at the bar forever, finally get your favourite dish ordered and it takes so long to arrive, that you have gone off to the gents..

Richard Kellam: proper safari …Laikipia, Mara and Bush Camps ……. proper safari, sorry already said that. Over to you Richard:

When you get a welcoming from two black-maned ones within seconds of landing, you kind of know this is your home. Nancie Wight has known this for a while since her Kicheche baptism five years ago.

A leopard lounges in the crook of an impossibly tortured fever tree watched by one ecstatic vehicle. A cheetah crosses a new concrete bridge. A family of seven cheetahs takes priority over a deHavilland Dash 7 on a perfectly manicured and graded Mara North airstrip.

Safari’s are rarely gauged by photos, nor should they be. A bush nirvana can be achieved by many resolutions.

Flying to Kicheche from Brisbane is hardly a short break, regular contributor and multi alumni Bill and Babs Westbook will tell you that with over 100 Kicheche nights to their name, but meet their Queensland neighbours: the Pattearsons. A family of fourteen across three generations.

On Wednesday night, at the RGS in London, James Nampaso picked up the prestigious accolade of Best Safari Guide at the Wanderlust World Guide Awards 2019.

I have not been to Kenya for a dozen years and coming back always filled me with trepidation as I had great memories from the past, not just from wildlife but also the landscapes and not least because the desperate old romantic in me always yearned for the cinematography from Out of Africa.