Quintessential Keekorok

It’s nearly dawn over the Mara but everything is still covered in a blanket of darkness. It makes the red-orange flame from the furnace of the hot-air balloon glow dramatically bright.

As the sun begins to rise behind the hills, we’re adrift in a wicker basket attached to a gigantic 100-foot tall balloon over the Mara plains.

It’s simply magic! The wind carries us off-course, over the ridge of the Ngamba hills and towards the Talek. Below, a pair of silver-backed jackals run helter-skelter amongst the shrubs and a hare scurries to its underground burrow.

From our floating vantage, we have an eagle’s view of the vastness of the Mara and the Serengeti.

It looks infinite. Loldiando hills mark the start of the Serengeti sprawl. While turning 180 degrees in the basket, the tops of giraffe heads break through the canopy of trees as they nibble on the acacia tree-tops, barely noticing us drifting in the air.

“Hot air balloons came into fashion in 1976 when Alan Root used one to film wildlife,” narrates the pilot, Peter Tanguay.

“It was easier to reach places where a conventional car could not to film stunning aerials of wildlife. Alan Root and his wife, Joan, are top wildlife filmmakers in the league of the late Jacque Cousteau, who filmed the first underwater sea documentaries.”

Soon, the enormous balloon in the sky attracted the attention of people ready to pay top-dollar for the once in a lifetime experience. It was the beginning of balloon safaris in Kenya.

The hour-long flight ends far too soon and a bumpy landing brings us back to earth as the basket topples on its side and we’re braced against it, looking up at the sky. At this point we have to crawl out of the basket to a champagne breakfast on the plains. Can’t complain.

“The balloon is made of 300,000 cubic feet of rib-stop nylon. It’s a woven fabric that won’t run even if it gets a hole,” explains Captain Tungway.

It takes 200 litres of liquid butane to keep the balloon afloat and the good thing is that the by-product is moisture and water. I think if it was seriously emitting greenhouse gases, l would not have clambered aboard.

“Every year, there’s advancement in hot air balloon technology. The burners are stronger and quieter than when balloon safaris first started,” explains the captain.

With the pounding rains at the end of the year, everything is verdant green as we take a game drive back to Keekorok. It’s difficult to believe these are the same plains which, in November, were yellow, dry and coarse.

A cheetah is marking her tree, spraying it with urine. Finished, she makes soft chirping sounds as she walks through the grass plains. We think she may be looking for her cubs.

Elephants, buffaloes, topis, wildebeest and other antelopes are just about everywhere and a lone rhino ambles peacefully in its Garden of Eden. “Masai Mara has 35 black rhinos. It’s the only place in Kenya where no rhino has been translocated to.

This is a purely home population,” explains Mohamed Tubi, the deputy senior warden of Masai Mara National Reserve.

Like all parks in Kenya, the Mara lost most of its rhinos during the infamous poaching era —1970s to 1990 — with an all-time low population of 13.

Keekorok is Masai Mara’s premier lodge, opened by Kenya’s first president, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, on September 25, 1965.

A sepia coloured photograph of him hangs in the bar, crossing Sand River two days before opening the lodge. Pictures of other famous people who checked in at Keekorok, like Prince Charles as a young boy from the United Kingdom, Dr Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, grace the walls.

“I served President Ferdinard Marcos of the Philippines in 1974, George Shultz and Manhattans in 1987, and Pope John Paul,” reminisces John Njoroge.

He’s been at Keekorok for 38 years, progressing from gardener to bartender to supervisor. He has a rich cache of bar-side stories. “The king and queen of Denmark sat by that tree,” he points to a trunk shooting through the foyer roof.

Although the original building was destroyed by fire a few years ago, the new Keekorok — or the place of dark trees in Maa — retains its magical character.

Now more ethno-African designed, the lawns are a beautiful spread reaching the wooden walkway and winding through the plains and the riverine forest to the hippo pool. One can watch river horses from the bar.

Going green, l mark my stay by planting an evergreen euclea divinorum, which even in times of drought stays green and is a lifesaver for animals, followed by a massage at Eseriani Wellness Centre, listening to the honk of the river horses. It’s the perfect stress-buster!

Email: rupi.mangat@yahoo.com