A Day Trip to Mount Satima

March 22, 2025

I had been talking to a few colleagues about potential day trips from Nairobi and I learned that several companies organise bus trips to the Aberdare Mountain Range. Initially, there was talk of joining one of these groups, but so many colleagues wanted to go that we figured it would make more sense to organise our own tour. In the end, our group ballooned to sixteen people, and instead of a single van we had to hire two.

We were told that the drive would take around three hours, which was true – to a limited degree. We left a little after five in the morning and arrived in the vicinity of the Aberdares sometime between eight and nine. Getting to the trailhead, however, was a different matter. At the town of Ol Kalou, the paved road ended, and the vans had to continue at a snail’s pace along the rocky path full of potholes. For a few kilometres, we stayed on flat ground, but then the vans began their ascent along the bends in the foothills. The driver of my van seemed to know the way and remained jovial throughout the journey, but I was told that the second driver made many ill-tempered remarks as his car trundled up the steep inclines, flinging rocks and dust in all directions.

Our stop by Shamata gate cost us yet another unforeseen delay. Although there were five people at the office, only one of them was involved in processing our tickets, which most of us had been able to buy online the day before. After that, we spent a strangely long time simply sitting in the vans while our license plates were being copied down. We finally made it to the trailhead at eleven o’clock.

The hike to the top of Mount Satima and back took the whole group around six hours. I was surprised that my general aversion to physical activity, I was among the fastest: I attributed this to the calming psychological effect of walking around with a camera and an umbrella cum parasol, which must have tricked my whole body into thinking that I was out on a casual stroll. We were lucky with the weather. I was shocked at how cold it was when we made a stop by a gas station in the morning, but the sun came out and it remained reasonably warm all day. There were enough clouds to provide respite from the gleam, yet they passed quickly enough that no view stayed permanently hidden from our sight.

The hike from Shamata gate took us past the Aberdares’ iconic Dragon Teeth: a series of dramatic rock formations jutting out of the green hillsides. We did not see many animals on the way beside a few birds that were scrounging for scraps around rest stops. However, we did see a lot of faeces. Some were big and looked like they might have been left behind by ungulates, while others – the ones we found while sitting down on the mountaintop – were small dry pellets. I guess they might have been left behind by hyraxes. As we rode back again from the trailhead to the park gate, we came across a whole herd of zebras lounging about in the forest.