The day after we arrived, I just slept, and occasionally ate.
We left Sea View Hotel at 4:45am, to drive to Dabolim to catch our flight from Goa to Mumbai, where we rushed around for a couple of days (seeing a film, shopping, buying peacock feathers for Coventry Community Circus, emailing, trying to post ostrich feathers and being told they're "totally not allowed", shopping, posting other stuff, shopping ...) before taking an 11pm taxi to catch our 3am plane to Nairobi, touching down at 6:30 am, exhausted.
Kenya's different to India in unexpected ways - the touts, salespeople nd hustlers have all been on customer care courses, for example. The airport safari-package sellers were very well-dressed, polite and friendly - and happily found the right phone number for the Youth Hostel and got us a slightly over-priced taxi, with none of the desparate persistence in trying to sell their product that we've been used to in tourist India.
We'll see more of Nairobi later - the Youth Hostel's basic but adequate, although all of Nairobi (and much of Kenya) is only getting intermittent water supplies - the Youth Hostel buy a tanker or two of water each day to supplement the meagre mains. Just one night here, entertained by a party of Ugandan schoolchildren, and chatting to Mel and Bob from the US in the morning, then a hot two-hour wait for a late-leaving seven-hour bus ride to Kisumu. Pretty knackered by now, but awake enough (between us) to meet one world-class athlete on his way home for a visit, two charming Tanzanian Sikh men off to a youth camp at a Gurdwara in Kericho, and several very young and friendly Kenyans - and to admire views of the Rift Valley, passing zebra, and the relatively safe and calm driving conditions (compared to China and India!).
- Mark
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