A Day Trip to Tsavo East

I made my day trip to Tsavo East during a weekend visit to Mombasa. I went together with my friend Bonnie who, after visiting me in Nairobi, spent a few days in Zanzibar and flew into Mombasa just a few hours before I made it into the city on the SGR train. The ride was a long one: Usually it takes about five and a half hours to get from Nairobi to Mombasa, but due to an unexplained delay in Voi, my ride took closer to six. My journey was also lengthened on both ends by various unconnected events. Firstly, it takes some forty or fifty minutes to get from northern Nairobi to the SGR terminus, which is jut beside the airport. Secondly, travellers are asked to arrive one hour early because they need to walk through several security scans and have their luggage inspected by sniffer dogs, after which they must either have their tickets printed at one of the staffed counters or by a machine.

I racked up a further delay on the Mombasa end, as finding an Uber driver is near impossible in the mess that is the terminus’ parking lot. I cancelled my ride with two drivers who I simply could not find (or understand over the phone) and only caught a third one thanks to a lucky coincidence: he was standing just a few metres across from me when I called him. Then, it took a good twenty minutes before we actually got out of the parking lot, as hundreds of people were trying to do the same, and each of the two exits only had two ticket-processing machines.

The train ride itself passed peaceably enough. I bought an economy class ticket and got a window seat, from which I could observe the ever-so slightly changing surroundings. Just outside Nairobi, we passed by a tightly packed camel pen, but all the domesticated animals I saw afterwards were goats and cows, which only vanished from view when the train began to pass through Tsavo. There, we disturbed the occasional elephant and one impala herd, though most elephants seemed quite uninterested in our passage.

We went to sleep later than I had hoped and had to wake up at half past four in the morning for our trip to Tsavo East. I was so tired that even though the road from Mombasa was often bumpy, I managed to fall asleep and remained so until we made a coffee stop just before the gate of the park. We saw most of our animals in the first two or three hours: there were lions, elephants, hippos, giraffes, and of course the usual grazers like zebras, impalas, gazelles, and hartebeests. Having been on a few safaris already, I was happy that we also came across some slightly more unusual animals and sights. One of the first animals we spotted was a monitor lizard, who was peeking out of a hole in a termite mound, and we also one ostrich couple with perhaps around twenty young. Among the other less usual animals were East African oryxes and vulturine guinea fowls.

The name Tsavo East refers to the fact that the park extends east of the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway, with Tsavo West lying on the other side. Tsavo is perhaps most famous for its so-called “red elephants,” who are red because the park’s red dust clings to their skin. I am pretty sure my hair had a red tinge as well, as our driver – who inauspiciously began the drive by putting on his prescription glasses – only seemed capable of spotting an animal when he saw it crossing the road, and I had to spend the entire journey standing under the roof to make sure that we would find something.

For lunch, we stopped at a lodge in the park, which to Bonnie’s horror was full of lizards. These spent most of their time chasing each other – often too close for Bonnie’s comfort – and sometimes tried to engage us in their strange push-up contests. Mostly unbothered, we filled ourselves with mangoes from the buffet while watching elephants play in the nearby watering hole. When we returned to Mombasa for dinner, we amused ourselves differently. Bonnie and I decided to visit a grill restaurant where she had brought another friend the night before, and we spent the entire evening giggling about what the staff must have thought of her. I am sure I saw them turn around when they saw her lead in another man.