Just for a moment extinguish any background noise, ignore the distant hum of traffic, neuter nearby chatter and silence the sirens and suspend your thoughts for a moment. Now transport yourself several thousand miles.
Kicheche 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.
Meet Ian Jones, he books a miserly short stay but somehow strikes gold on every drive (not uncommon in Mara Conservancies) so it is with much loathing that Spot resorts to gauging by numerical value.
There is little or no compassion in the animal world but this does not stop our emotional bonds with animals.
Sandy coloured, in an impossible situation, everything against it, little chance of survival in this fertile outfield, pursued across the green by the gold adversary.
It is one of the most fabled sights in nature yet the thunderous river crossings actually only make up a tiny fraction of the wildebeests and zebras long journey.
Fig. Mating. Anyone who has truffled, trawled, plied and picked their way across Olare Conservancy's fertile plains and luggas will be familiar with this titled predator.
No doubt you remember the new lion pride in Laikipia which our Northern guides recently discovered .... lions seem to be King right now ...
By Simon Reeve It can be hard to fully understand a creature unless you encounter it in its natural environment. The same can be true of friends.
Yes I know it is Bill Westbrook again and if this either vexes or irks you, please bear in mind Spot's portals are always gaping for fresh photographic meat and titillating story-lines.
Wildlife is never measured analytically, it is only rarely about accumulation and should never be about boorish point scoring. For a moment though pity Nelson Kasoe, a Bush Camp guide not without a good sprinkling of Kicheche stardust.
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