During the briefing for Unexpected Kenya someone mentioned that it was going to be hard work and that we should expect to get very little sleep. I thrive on the road and I was ready for the challenge, or so I thought. Capturing outstanding images has not been easy, I had not expected it to be but it has certainly been much harder than I expected.
I wish I had a story about how we had an exciting day and how everything went on smoothly. Clearly, I do not. Today started off slow and by the end of the day we had only managed to shoot at a single location as opposed to the two that we had planned for.
After a late start we were back in Mt. Elgon National Park to shoot at the Kitum and Making’eny caves.
Steps leading into Kitum Cave
It is roughly a 500m uphill hike to the Kitum cave. Wear practical footwear, you will need it. Kitum cave became notorious in the 1980s when two European visitors contracted Marburg virus there. I recall reading The Hot Zone by Richard Preston and thinking to myself of how I would never step into that cave.Hah! See me now.
The path to Making’eny Cave is basically a buffalo track.
The Waterbuck are accustomed to humans and do not to run away when a vehicle approaches
According to Silas our guide for the day here are about 50 Zebras in the park
After shooting at the caves, we were back on the road again as we headed to Nandi Hills. We had called in the morning to arrange for accommodation and after picking up our location scout in Eldoret and having a lovely dinner I was really looking forward to getting some rest.
More than an hour later after arriving at Nandi Hills we were still driving around trying to find somewhere to sleep. Long story short, I’m really exhausted and writing this in bed. Take everything your location manager says with a grain of salt, in our case I prefer to go with a bag of salt. To make matters worse he was so nonchalant about the whole situation.
Anyway, tomorrow is another day. We’re planning on catching the sunrise. The early rays of the sun shining on the tea bushes should be a sight to behold.
Unexpected Kenya continues tomorrow …
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9 Comments
Sorry to hear about your day. After a good night rest everything looks better. The views you got today were in any case absolutely stunning wow
Now that I’m back home and missing the road already I definitely wouldn’t mind reliving the day. Hindsight *sigh*
Sorry the day was underwhelming , but your images look fantastic!!
Thank you
This does sound like a very exhausting day! At least you get to see some interesting sights though 🙂 Hope it gets little easier soon!
It never did get easier but I enjoyed the whole trip regardless
I just caught myself up with your other Unexpected Kenya posts. Loving this series so far as well as your pictures – what a fun assignment! I really like the pictures of the villager’s tribal scars in your second post especially in light of an article I recently read on Huffington Post about tribal scarification in certain West African countries: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/23/scarification_n_5850882.html
I just read the article, it is a shame that people think it is ugly now when once it was a mark of beauty.
[…] got the chance to visit Mt Elgon National Park while taking part in Unexpected Kenya series. Seeing as we were scouting for locations to shoot we weren’t able to explore the park as […]