Eburru Forest Hike

Roughly about a 120km from Nairobi downtown is the Nakuru county which has the Eburru forest.

I decided to do this hike and the tour operator asked to meet at 5:30AM in Nairobi. We left punctually and picked up more people on the way until there were about 20 people on the mini bus.

Driving through beautiful, wooded areas that were visible after an hour or so out of Nariobi, we saw views of a couple of rift valleys. The road to our destination was well paved for the first 100 km and then became pretty rough.

Of the two and a half hours drive, the last 13 kilometers a pretty hard road and pretty bumpy. There was a time when the bus got stuck going uphill such that it had a real possibility of sliding backwards. But we were lucky that the driver pressed on and it continued without us having to get out and push it.

Finally, at about nine thirty, we reached the start of the hike and got the ranger, and he had a gun. He said it was a G3 gun. We started walking in single file behind the ranger.

The ranger said that he has encountered leopards many times in his patrol in the deep jungle. He said they were about three feet tall, brown haired with black spots. Today he expects leopard, buffalo or hyena to show themselves as we hike, but in all his career, he has not seen these animals attack anybody.

As we walk, it was very beautiful weather with the dense forest on each side of the path. We passed by some ant nests on the way.

We already started at about 8,500 feet altitude. The summit is at about 9,300 feet but the route climbs and descends thereby making the hike gain over 2,000 in altitude in total.

As we walked, we came across some leopard footsteps. There were many good sets of them on the path and they finally got lost in the dense vegetation.

The summit is reachable in about six miles or so. As we walked, a truck passable route kept going with us and we just saw a snail with a name in Swahili as Kono Kono.

We are supposed to leave the truck trail soon and go in denser wilderness, but for now, it is just a beautiful walk.

Along the way we passed a beautiful view of the lake Naivasha.

We saw a Muko tree and as we were walking along, there was a pair of colobus monkeys on top of them.

The monkeys were very agile and jumped around and I could only take picture of one of them. It was black and had white fur. I could see its face, but didn't have enough time to capture it.

We came across a plant with leaves which smell like lemon, which is an indigenous plant, and they make tea out of that.

A couple of motorcycle riding buddies of the ranger came by, and it made for a break and a conversation for all.

We just took a quick water break before proceeding to the off-road trail.

As we came to the dense part of the forest, there was sometimes room for only one person to pass, and the guide was clearing up dense overgrown bushes so we could pass.

The Kenyans are very well-known athletes. They usually are the winners of marathons, and I saw some of them walking much faster than me. There were many other people in our group today. Some of them had worked together in a NGO which works in Sudan, Somalia, Niger and other places. And these folks were from various countries like Finland, England, France, Italy, US.

And it was great to talk to them and learn about their experiences from all these war tone places that they were serving as volunteers.

I stopped to take pictures and soon was left so behind that when I continued, I was unsure if I was following the correct trail, however, after a bit of very fast walking, I caught up with the rest of the people who were the fast walkers.

On the way, there were a lot of stinging nettles whose bite came through the pants and my sandals. The guide gave me a leaf which could be rubbed and squeezed on the burning pain of the nettles and that kind of reduced the pain.

We saw many epiphytes on the trees.

At many points the path was narrow and had fallen trees.

You could see how plants fought for sunlight and thrived when they were in the sun.

At many points of the dense trail, people were walking by themselves at their own pace, and I kept trying to catch up to them.

This tree with long and narrow leaves was fascinating and I saw it a lot.

There were multi-colored flowers along the way and this pink flower was the most common.

The many views of the valleys and the lake were fascinating.

We were lucky to have evaded the rain even though it was forecast for today.

At long last, I climbed a small hill and was at a meadow that marked the top of the western summit. A few hikers were already there and each was enjoying their lunch or snack.

A short fifteen-minute stop at the peak later, many of us were ready to get going. We started walking down with the guide Mike and retraced our path. It was mostly downhill but had many sections of steep uphill as well. As I fell behind, mostly at the uphill, the ranger stopped for me, and we resumed.

Towards the last one mile of the hike, there were grassy patches which were very dense and deep, walking through them was challenging and prone to spraining the ankle.

Since a few of us were walking faster, the ranger took us on a small detour to see the 'sauna', a geothermal fumarole. To get there was to go down a steep hill and soon one was breathing very hot steam coming out of a canyon in gusts. It did not smell much of Sulphur and was pleasant to be in, however it was very hot, and I could not withstand it for more than a minute.

After the sauna, it was a mere 10-minute walk to the starting point. There were many colorful flowers everywhere and the path was fragrant.

All of us were back by 3:30pm or thereabouts. Everyone seemed sore but pretty upbeat. We did not come across any leopard, buffaloes or hyenas but we all had a good time, good conversations and a good workout in the steep hills.