Escarpment

 I found Julian at the Jomo Kenyatta Airport by spotting my name on his placard.  Youthful, cheerful, and the back of his hands scarred and burned he said he was headed to Uganda right after. He led me out to my Toyota Land Cruiser Prado 4x4 for the week, took the wheel, and drove us into heavily congested Narobi.  Inching along, after several kilometers we spotted a petrol station for a fill up.  Once back on the highway he pulled over, hopped out, and started walking.  Toward Uganda.

Luckily with Google Navigation I knew I could get to the Mara Duma Bush Camp at the Masai Mara National Reserve some five hours south at just about sundown.  Nairobi is on the equator so the sun rises and sets at 6:30 every day.  Driving at night in Kenya is highly discouraged. Traffic thinned as I drove the left hand side of the highway along with semi-trucks, school buses, and excursion vehicles.

Just west of Nairobi is the Great Rift, extending from below the Serengeti in Tanzania on north into Ethiopia and Djibouti, a spreading of tectonic plates and the ancestral home of humans. Google maps found me a vantage point at the town of Escarpment, so named after rock debris fallen to the valley floor as the Great Rift separated, providing a commanding view along a highway turnout. Google also selected a shorter route for me, not to Escarpment, but one with a police traffic stop.  The trucks were being waived on but travelers like me made to stop.

I was worried. I'd read about bribery to get away from an arbitrary police stop. Hakuna matata.  Turned out a semi truck had crashed and blocked all traffic.  Semis waited as large trucks could not negotiate alternate routes. Thus Google gave me a second chance at Escarpment while also insisting I was off route headed there.  At the overlook there were dozens of trinkets shops.  I pressed on watching the sun head further west when I realized I could get off the highway, descend into Escarpment, and get back on route to Masai Mara.

Early December is the end of the short rain season.  It had rained on and off the last week leaving ruts, rocks, and pools in the deep ochre Kenyan soil.  The Prado was up for it as we descended switchbacks past schools, police stations, vendor stands, and churches as well as many parades of happy school children with plaid uniforms walking towards homes along this muddy trek. Several entrepreneurial shops were failing in this remote area. I guessed that locals wanting to escape that life first sold trinkets at the Great Rift overlook then in despair headed to Nairobi.

I feared it was too dark to get down the hill, across the valley, and up the narrow slope of the mountainside to the south and still get to my lodging for the night. I slogged, bobbed, and slid my way down, across, and up with a very big smile feeling it the perfect way to start this leg of the journey. In the town of Escarpment all sorts of semis were backed up coming into the traffic mess from the other direction. I realized I could turn off the road through gullys, then dirt lots, and finally on a frontage path of vendor stalls to make it to the road south.

And so I arrived at the closed Sekenani gate of the national reserve a half hour after sunset and lowered my window to the uniformed guards.  Fortunately via WhatsApp my lodging had let me know what to say and in short order I was in my luxury tent for the night ready for adventure tomorrow.