London, England

So I’m sitting in the airport in London right now, and this is really the first chance I’ve had to sit back and reflect on my time in Africa. My thoughts are kind of all over the place, but being up for about two days straight tends to have that effect on people.

My day technically started yesterday morning back on the Masai Mara. We woke up, went out on an early morning game drive and continued to see a lot of amazing stuff. Here’s a few shots from that:

Lioness - Kenya - Masai Mara

The same lioness a little later. Another of my favorite shots - Kenya - Masai Mara

Masai Village just outside the Mara - Kenya - Masai Mara

The rest of Kenya isn’t exactly the most attractive and comfortable place in the world, but it’s hard not to love the Serengeti. After the drive was over, we headed back to camp, packed up and took off back towards Nairobi. It’s about a four to five hour drive and even though the roads are far worse than anything we travelled on in southern Africa I managed to sleep through a fair bit of it.

We were travelling in two separate trucks, Ben, V and Michael in one and Siobahn2 and myself in the other. About an hour outside of Nairobi we stopped at some small shop along the road for a packed lunch. When it was over, we said our goodbyes and took off back to the city. We dropped Siobahn2 back off at her hostel and I caught a ride with someone else to the airport.

Roadside restaurant - Kenya - Masai Mara

My flight didn’t actually leave until around 11:00pm, so I had about 8 hours to spend in Jomo-Kenyatta. I had figured that it’d take a few hours to get through customs, security and the other various forms of bureaucracy that self important officials in developing countries love to slow people down with. And that’s not meant to be a shot at third world countries, not in the slightest. Just in my experience either they do not care at all about who comes or goes in their country or they are extremely paranoid and make it as difficult and painful as possible. It often varies from official to official, but most of the ones I ran into leaving Kenya were of the latter variety.

So it did take a few hours to get into the main terminal. I figured I’d be able to find an internet connection somewhere and upload pictures, journals, catch up on the news and all that kind of fun stuff. No such luck though, of the 3 or 4 wireless networks that were open – none of them actually worked. I was even to the point where I was trying to find their sources so I could offer to fix them, but that proved to be too difficult to pinpoint as well.

Instead I just organized my pictures and walked around a lot. The airport really isn’t that big and consists primarily of one dimly lit hallway that has about 14 gates and is surrounded by a bunch of cluttered duty-free shops.

The sprawling Serengeti - Kenya/Tanzania - Masai Marai & Serengeti Plains

Eventually we boarded (Kenya Airways hilarious boarding procedures that involved laminated colored construction paper I’m sure will be the subject of a future post) and I sat through the nine hour trip to London. It wasn’t that bad, really, and it did leave me a lot of time to think.

I found my thoughts frequently drifting back to all the cool people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet on this trip. Andy, Katrina, Jim, Elizabeth, Lydia and Tara are probably in Malawi somewhere right now, Michael moved on to Arusha, Allison would just be leaving for Namibia, Gerrie and Jimmy are likely a day or two into their next trip back down to Jo’burg and V, Ben and Siobahn2 are all in Kenya for a while yet. I’m extremely jealous of all of them – well, except for the five Irish girls. They would have arrived back in Dublin on Monday and should already be back at work. Less jealous there.

Not to get too sappy here (don’t worry, I’ll go back to talking about monkeys and poop in a little bit) but I really didn’t think I’d find myself missing everyone that quickly, especially folks who, in the grand scheme of things, I hadn’t spend that much time with really. But I think that whatever it is t hat draws each of us out here, be it a longing for adventure, a sense of wanderlust or something else entirely also makes us kindred spirits of sorts. It’s rare to find those anywhere, and suddenly finding oneself in a group full of them makes it awful hard to want to leave.

I was thinking about that a lot the other night at the campfire on the Masai Mara, while everyone sat around it reading or writing quietly. As I sat there staring into the flames, one of the Masai men working in the shack behind me briefly turned on a battery powered radio. As if to drive home the point my mind was already circling around, I couldn't help but laugh as a familiar set of nonsensical lyrics echoed out into the campsite. There’s a lot more people like us out there still… keep travelling, keep finding them. Sort of like immortals in Highlander, only hopefully with less chopping off of heads. So I guess the question for me right now is, where to next?

The most immediate answer to that is, of course… Newark. My flight to Liberty International leaves in about four hours. The prospect of a few hour layover in Newark has me considerably less excited than a full day in Nairobi’s poorly ventilated, internetless airport did. The only saving grace that airport possesses is that it is located on the exact opposite side of the country as I am, and honestly I still sometimes feel that it’s a little too close.

The more long term answer to the question though… is I don’t really know. I do know that I don’t want to wait another year for it. Maybe something this winter. There’s still a lot of Asia I’d like to see. Who knows. I’m open to suggestions. Anyone up for an adventure?

Also, because I promised to end on a bathroom related note. I have to say that London-Heathrow has the best bathrooms of all international airports I have ever been to. They are clean, have soft toilet paper and I haven’t gotten one glare for brushing my teeth in there – which was kind of unexpected all things considered, given the country I am in.

Anyway, that’s going to about do it for me for this one. I’ll see everyone back home again next week, and just for good measure, here’s one last picture of a monkey:

Baboon deep in thought holding a baby - Botswana - Chobe National Park (Day 2)

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