First day in Nairobi includes a trip to feed giraffes and a visit to Karen Blixen's home.
Giraffe Manor, an old manor stands grandly amidst acres of smooth green lawns, surrounded by scratchy jungles, which house protected herds of giraffes. The manor is a five star hotel, horrendously expensive, N informs us, where we can visit for high tea in typical British tradition, or enjoy lunch or dinner ... but reservations are needed. The food is secondary to the beautiful views from the manor dining room, and the biggest draw is of course the giraffes that stroll regularly across the lawns, and occasionally peep into the dining room. They seem to be as curious as the visitors who frantically scramble for cameras to capture this once-in-a-lifetime experience of giraffes in your dining room.
But we don't venture there, we move to the feeding platform. Yes, a platform is needed, given the height of giraffes :) An affable Kenyan guide hands out small packets of giraffe food, and tells us each visitor is allowed only two packets. They don't want to overfeed the giraffes.
The giraffes apparently don't agree. One sweet giraffe, Helen, happily nuzzled all the visitors crowded onto the platform and ate the bites proffered by each one.
Giraffes have black tongues. They really do! Long sticky black tongues that snake out of their mouths to pick up the pellets that we hold out to them.
I wish I had carried my hand sanitizer!
A and D have the time of their lives feeding Helen for as long as she wants to eat. This was really a once in a lifetime experience for them, and they didn't want to miss a moment of it.
Giraffes also have beautiful liquid eyes and long thick eyelashes any woman would die for!
Some warthogs are hanging around the platform, happy to eat the pellets that fall while the giraffes are being fed.
After Helen finally loses interest in the food and wanders off, we decide to leave. No other giraffe seems to be venturing near the platform.
Next stop ... Karen Blixen's home. Karen Blixen is the author a over a dozen books, her most famous one is Out Of Africa, which was of course made into a major motion picture with the same name, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. I saw the movie in childhood, and still remember the stunning landscapes of Africa I first saw there.
A quaint stone cottage set in deep green, landscaped lawns, a very old fashioned kitchen, the bedrooms of Karen and her husband ... hers much bigger and better furnished than his ... a study, a library, a dining room still with the table set for dinner ... the old European settlers who moved to Africa lived in comparative luxury and comfort. Yet how would they have felt, living so far away from any countrymen, in such alien situations? It takes a certain kind of courage and a different mindset to be able to move and live so far away from home, and everything familiar. And how lonely would Karen have been?
She had an affair with another man - out of loneliness? Or was it because of an unhappy marriage? S and I remark on how 'modern and liberated' she was, to have an affair, G sees nothing strange or out of the ordinary. Seems we Indians still inherently disapprove of extra-marital affairs regardless of circumstances.
A late lunch at another very nice restaurant, very 'British expat' in both ambience and clientale ... I begin to see what living in India in British times must have been like for the British.
And we reached home tired and satisfied with the day. Dinner at home Indian food cooked by N's Kenyan maid, followed by a movie on TV ... a good start to the holiday!
Giraffe Manor, an old manor stands grandly amidst acres of smooth green lawns, surrounded by scratchy jungles, which house protected herds of giraffes. The manor is a five star hotel, horrendously expensive, N informs us, where we can visit for high tea in typical British tradition, or enjoy lunch or dinner ... but reservations are needed. The food is secondary to the beautiful views from the manor dining room, and the biggest draw is of course the giraffes that stroll regularly across the lawns, and occasionally peep into the dining room. They seem to be as curious as the visitors who frantically scramble for cameras to capture this once-in-a-lifetime experience of giraffes in your dining room.
But we don't venture there, we move to the feeding platform. Yes, a platform is needed, given the height of giraffes :) An affable Kenyan guide hands out small packets of giraffe food, and tells us each visitor is allowed only two packets. They don't want to overfeed the giraffes.
The giraffes apparently don't agree. One sweet giraffe, Helen, happily nuzzled all the visitors crowded onto the platform and ate the bites proffered by each one.
Giraffes have black tongues. They really do! Long sticky black tongues that snake out of their mouths to pick up the pellets that we hold out to them.
I wish I had carried my hand sanitizer!
A and D have the time of their lives feeding Helen for as long as she wants to eat. This was really a once in a lifetime experience for them, and they didn't want to miss a moment of it.
Giraffes also have beautiful liquid eyes and long thick eyelashes any woman would die for!
Some warthogs are hanging around the platform, happy to eat the pellets that fall while the giraffes are being fed.
After Helen finally loses interest in the food and wanders off, we decide to leave. No other giraffe seems to be venturing near the platform.
Next stop ... Karen Blixen's home. Karen Blixen is the author a over a dozen books, her most famous one is Out Of Africa, which was of course made into a major motion picture with the same name, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. I saw the movie in childhood, and still remember the stunning landscapes of Africa I first saw there.
A quaint stone cottage set in deep green, landscaped lawns, a very old fashioned kitchen, the bedrooms of Karen and her husband ... hers much bigger and better furnished than his ... a study, a library, a dining room still with the table set for dinner ... the old European settlers who moved to Africa lived in comparative luxury and comfort. Yet how would they have felt, living so far away from any countrymen, in such alien situations? It takes a certain kind of courage and a different mindset to be able to move and live so far away from home, and everything familiar. And how lonely would Karen have been?
She had an affair with another man - out of loneliness? Or was it because of an unhappy marriage? S and I remark on how 'modern and liberated' she was, to have an affair, G sees nothing strange or out of the ordinary. Seems we Indians still inherently disapprove of extra-marital affairs regardless of circumstances.
A late lunch at another very nice restaurant, very 'British expat' in both ambience and clientale ... I begin to see what living in India in British times must have been like for the British.
And we reached home tired and satisfied with the day. Dinner at home Indian food cooked by N's Kenyan maid, followed by a movie on TV ... a good start to the holiday!
