East Africa: Hiking Among Elephants in the Aberdares

The Aberdares Mountain Range is 160km from “tip to toe” and encompasses over 2,000sqkm of Afro-montane wilderness. There are several ways to tackle this pristine highland. One such hike is to Mt Satima, or Ol Donyo Lesatima, the highest peak at 3,999m and located on the south-eastern end of the range.

Leave Nairobi before dawn; on average, the hike takes seven hours. Drive north to Nyeri, about 140km by road, then access the Aberdares through the KWS park headquarters at Mweiga. Purchase tickets and pick up an armed KWS ranger. The resident populations of elephant and buffalo warrant bringing along a big gun. Inside the Aberdares National Park, drive about 20km to get to the starting point.

You start off in a patch of forest thick with pencil cedar, podocarpus and rosewood trees hung with sprays of reddish-pink flowers. Tassels of old man’s beard swayed from mossy boughs, and every now and then the canopy shakes from monkeys leaping around in the upper layers. Further up, the forest ends abruptly, giving way to drier ground covered with bushes, short trees and giant heather.

Wild mint and lemony scents drift on the wind. You then ascend into expansive moors of hardy tussock grass, groundsel and towering Senecia plants.

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