Mr P's Top Ten Kenyan Tips

Maasai Mara

One of the most famous and important wildlife conservation and wilderness areas in Africa, world-renowned for its exceptional populations of lion, African leopard, cheetah and African bush elephant. It also hosts the "Great Migration", which secured it as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa, and as one of the ten Wonders of the World, and is named in honour of the Maasai, the inhabitants of the area, who migrated to the area from the Nile. Their description of the area when looked at from afar: "Mara" means "spotted" in the local Maasai language, due to the many short bushy trees which dot the landscape.

Nairobi

The capital and largest city of Kenya. The name comes from Maasai phrase which means "cool water", a reference to the Nairobi River which flows through the city. The metropolitan area has a population of 9,354,580 and is popularly referred to as the Green City in the Sun. It was founded only in 1899 by the colonial authorities in British East Africa, as a rail depot on the Uganda Railway, quickly replacing Mombasa as the capital of Kenya in 1907.

Mombasa

The coastal city of Kenya along the Indian Ocean, known as the "white and blue" city. It is the country's oldest (circa 900 AD) and second-largest city, after the capital Nairobi, with a population of about 1,208,333 people according to the 2019 census. Its metropolitan region is the second-largest in the country, and has a population of 3,528,940.

Treetops Hotel

The hotel in Aberdare National Park first opened in 1932 by Eric Sherbrooke Walker, built into the tops of the trees as a treehouse. The original structure was burned down by African guerrillas during the 1954 Mau Mau Uprising, but the hotel was rebuilt near the same waterhole. The hotel is where Princess Elizabeth was staying in 1952 when she acceded to the throne, upon the death of her father, George VI.

Lake Victoria

The lake to the west of Kenya divided among three countries: Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, named by the explorer John Hanning Speke in 1858, in his reports—the first Briton to document it, while on an expedition with Richard Francis Burton to locate the source of the Nile River. It is Africa's largest lake by area, and the world's largest tropical lake, and the second-largest fresh water lake in the world after Lake Superior.

Swahili

The language and culture of the people inhabiting the Kenyan coast as well as those of Tanzania, Uganda and Mozambique, the islands of Zanzibar and Comoros and some parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi. The native language and culture, is the product of the history of the coastal part of the African Great Lakes region. As with the language, the culture has a Bantu core that has borrowed from other influences.

Mount Kenya

A "strato-volcano" and the highest mountain in the country named after it, and the second-highest in Africa, after Kilimanjaro, lying about 10 1⁄4 miles south of the equator and 90 miles north-northeast of the capital Nairobi. The lower slopes are covered by forest, and the mountain was designated a National Park and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, receiving over 16,000 visitors per year.

Mau Mau Uprising

Also known as the Kenya Emergency, it was a war in Kenya (1920-1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), and the British authorities, dominated by the Kikuyus, Merus and Embu people, the KLFA also comprised units of Kamba and Maasai who fought against the white European settlers , the British Army, and the local Kenya Regiment (British colonists, local auxiliary militia, and pro-British Kikuyu people)

Richard Leakey

During excavations at Lake Turkana in 1984, this anthropologist discovered the Turkana Boy, a 1.6-million-year-old Homo erectus fossil, leading to the belief that East Africa, including Kenya, is one of the earliest regions where modern humans are believed to have lived. Evidence was found in 2018, of the early emergence of long-distance trade networks (involving goods such as obsidian), the use of pigments, and the possible making of spears.

Jamhuri Day

Kenya's "Independence Day", the 12th December, following its period British colonisation from 1920 until 1963. Since its independence, it has been a republic, with a president, a national assembly, called the Bunge, and a legal system.