Hakuna matata in Lamu

I must be the only soul in the world to have returned after spending eight days in Kenya without spotting a giraffe. Or hearing the roar of the lion. In fact, the sole lion I saw was an occasionally moving brown speck in the yellow grass in the far distance.

Of course, I am now the butt of jokes for aforesaid failures (after all, even my husband, who visited Kenya for just two days, came back with rich images of giraffes popping their elegant heads above Nairobi's slow-moving traffic). And I am also the subject of derision for not seeing Masai Mara — Africa's star tourist attraction.

But, so what if my Kenyan animal stories are about donkeys, cats (small domesticated ones) and baboons — rather than the Big Five. I am still dining off them, thank you.

Think tourism in Kenya and it is usually all about the animal migration, the safaris and the incredible Masai Mara. But thanks to the Kenyan Tourism Board planning an off-the-beaten-track kind of itinerary for our group of journalists from India, we got to see a side of the country that the likes of Angelina Jolie and the Prince of Monaco frequent, but is not talked about much in India. It's the lovely coastal parts, where the dense mangrove-laden waterways lead you into exciting islands, where the cream-coloured beaches are still uncrowded, and where the long-limbed beautiful people of various ethnicities are warm hosts with all the time in the world to have humour-laced conversations with you.

As I was going through the yellow fever formalities (Indian health authorities really need to get their act together on this) before heading to Kenya, my friends kept emailing me, with ghoulish relish, news about kidnappings of women tourists by Somali militants at Lamu. Stay off the coast, they warned. But, it was Lamu that I was destined to go to. True, this idyllic archipelago has had a spate of “incidents” recently — but as the Scottish lady Louise we bumped into at the island told us, “you could be held at gunpoint anywhere, anytime in the world”.

Donkey days and beguiling nights

The minute you step off the boat into Lamu town, you feel transported into some Arabian Nights set. The narrow alleys teeming with donkeys, old homes with distinctively carved wooden doorways, men in checked lungis and T-shirts, women wearing veils, and smiling children playing on the waterfront take you back to another era. There are all of three four-wheelers (and one of these is a donkey ambulance) in this 14th-Century trading outpost, which has been declared a World Heritage Site. Ivory, mangrove logs and slaves used to be exported from this once busy port. Today, with 10,000 people, Lamu town is an exciting mish-mash of many cultures — local Swahili intermingling with Omani Arab, Portuguese, Gujarati Indian and the more recent Italian influence — so that everything looks faintly familiar and yet exotic.

Donkeys are rather central to Lamu; they cheerfully wander around the narrow by-lanes, some with people riding them, some with goods, and many just aimlessly, stopping to poke their nose hopefully into coconut shells and peep enquiringly into doorways. Apparently, in the mornings, they unerringly make their way to the owner's home and stomp outside until fed.

As for the cats, right from the time we land on the tiny airstrip at the shed-like airport, where our luggage is wheeled out in a handcart to the jetty and loaded onto the waiting boat, we can't escape their unblinking presence. The story goes that the Egyptians who came here for trade got their fabled cats with them — but now, like the people of the island, they are rather intermingled and the greys, Gingers and stripeys watch us haughtily from their lazy perch.

While Lamu town with its bazaars and street-carts selling cut and salted mangoes gives us a taste of local culture, for the scenic beauty it's the sparsely inhabited islands like Manda and Shella — where European billionaires have built villas and resorts — that we head to.

These island resorts — especially the Majlis, at Manda, where we spend a couple of luxurious nights — give a rather Mediterranean feel, perhaps because they are owned by the Italians and French.

The Majlis, which has been furnished with an opulent yet elegant Omani-meets-Swahili-meets-Italian touch, is the sort of place where you can lounge on a hammock all day long, going for an occasional swim or a massage, the grey parrots making a pleasant din in the background, and the two resident dogs trotting into your room along with the waiters whenever you order something.

A boat trip to the Takwa ruins — a 16th-Century Swahili habitation in a dense green island that can be accessed through a winding narrow waterway — is pretty exciting, the evening culminating with cocktails on a floating bar (pathetic choice, though, this boat bar offered) watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean, listening to some vintage music.

A little bit of Italy in Malindi

From the rather exotic Lamu, we move to Malindi only to run into Italians everywhere again — they seem to own most of the resorts here and attract their own ilk. If Lamu is rather exclusive, Malindi is clearly where the mass, organised tourism action is — huge resorts brimming with hundreds of rooms line the ocean way, the town has a fair bit of nightlife by way of casinos and bars, and there's a lot of fishing action; it's also an attractive conference destination, we learn, as it can take in a lot of capacity.

We stay at the Garoda Resort, a sleepy-looking place that comes suddenly alive at night with music. But it's still quiet compared to the exciting action at the exotically designed Temple Point Resort next door.

The high point of our stay in Malindi is on the last day, when we set out by boat on the creek to visit a restaurant called Rock In The Sea. Except that we get our tides and timings all wrong. Rain pelts down on us, the tide recedes and our boat is stranded far from the castle-like restaurant — no choice but to wade through the shallows. Wet and bedraggled, we arrive to get the very best meal of our entire sojourn in Kenya — scrumptious fish for the non-vegetarians and local leafy green delicacy Sukuma.

Fact File

Kenya is currently the most sought after destination from India and, hence, well connected. There is the direct Kenyan Airways flight from Mumbai; the low-cost Air Arabia operates from 13 destinations in India including Jaipur, Delhi, Mumbai, Kochi and Chennai, with a stopover at Sharjah.

Medicine man with a mobile phone

If you are going to do wildlife in Kenya, then five is the operative number. There are the Big Five (lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and buffalo), there are the small five (elephant shrew, rhino beetle, buffalo-headed weaver, lion ant and leopard tortoise), and then there are the special five (Somalian ostrich, Grevy's zebra, Gerenuk antelope, reticulated giraffe and Oryx).

Call it coincidence, but we were five media-persons on this trip. But it did not prove a lucky number for wildlife, as we saw just two of the big five and none of the others. But to be fair, we only visited Amboseli National Park on the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, which is out-and-out elephant country. Besides plenty of close-ups of the pachyderms, it offered us great views of the funky-haired grey-crowned cranes, wildebeests, zebras, hippos and naughty baboons (one sauntered into a colleague's room and would have helped himself to tea if he hadn't been chased by a watchful Masai warrior. A priceless sight watching our friend running out of the room, followed by the baboon and, in turn, chased by the Masai). Much to our amusement, when we are shown our lovely cottages at the Ol Tukai Lodge, the valet tells us that the baboons like peeping into bathroom windows when somebody is showering — “but don't worry, ma'am; they have poor memories”!

Two standout memories of our stay at Amboseli: Sun-downer cocktails on an observation post atop a hill — getting cheerfully high on a combination of Dawa Dawa, a local lime and vodka drink, and the spectacular scenery — tuskers grazing in swamplands that appear to stretch on and on, even as Mount Kilimanjaro suddenly condescends us with a spectacular view of its snow-capped peak.

The second is the visit to Kankeri village to meet the Masai tribespeople for a glimpse into their electricity-less lives — open campfires, goats herded in the central open area, and a protective thorny wall around the village to keep away wild beasts. They do their ceremonial war dance for us, after which John Melobo, the village head (his Masai name, we learn, is He who killed a lion), takes us around the village, forcing us to buy beaded trinkets made by the village women and baubles procured from neighbouring Tanzania (the Masais claim they don't need documents to hop across the border as their traditional clothes are their passport). Medicine man John Supuk (the Highland Born) shows us strange barks used to cure joint pain, malaria and other ailments and some that give a Viagra-like effect (the Masai men have many wives, so that's perhaps needed). It all looks rather clichedly primitive until the medicine man suddenly produces his mobile phone and cheerfully exchanges email ids with us.

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