Journey to the Mountains of the Moon - 1994 (4)

Research the previous evening had provided us with the information that the ‘bus depot’ where we arrived in Nanyuki was also the place to pick up a local ride by taxi. We found a friendly driver and his ‘co-pilot’ who were willing to take us to the road junction for Sirimon Gate - off the main highway north. They helped us to load our packs and then we were off for the princely sum of Ks500. The driver and his mate were very chatty and happy to talk politics. The situation seemed to be pretty much like any other country in the world – country areas disadvantaged by policies that favoured the cities etc. There was much talk of corruption and regional favouritism.

To emphasise the point, we were stopped along the way by a policeman. According to our driver this was common practice with the country police officers seeking ‘tea money’ from wayfarers before allowing them to pass. Our presence in the car may have kept the cost down a bit for our driver.

We had arranged to be dropped at the main road junction where the road to Sirimon Gate begins. Our reasoning was that this would give us some time to walk ourselves fit and get used to the higher altitude. Nanyuki is at just over 1900m ASL and Sirimon Gate is at 2600m. The walk in from the road junction at about 2000m is about 9km and would give us a chance to stretch our legs and lungs. We would also get used to feeling the weight of our packs before we hit the steeper stuff! Our taxi driver and his mate could not see the point of us doing this and wanted to drop us off at the park gate but eventually we managed to convince them that we weren’t entirely nuts.

The 9km walk to the park gate took us four hours which was probably ok given that we were carrying heavy packs and gained about 600 metres in altitude. Along the way we passed by fields under cultivation although there were not many people about. Periodically on the track we had to detour around a large pile of elephant dung. At least the local shamba owners would have ready supplies of good-quality fertiliser for free – possibly in repayment for some of their crop which had been trampled and/or eaten.

Upon arrival at Sirimon Gate we payed our respects to the Park Ranger and explained that we would camp at the gate overnight and head into Mt Kenya National Park the following day. There were two South African couples at the Ranger Post. Hindi, Gregory, Sharon and Gavin who were planning to climb the south face of Batian.

Bert reclining in the tent at Sirimon Gate

We set up our tent and settled down for a bit of a rest. Just before getting ready to cook our evening meal we were hit by a violent hailstorm. Dominic’s expedition tent had its first real weather test and passed with flying colours. The only problem we found was that the air duct tubes in the vestibule, which we closed to keep out the hail, had filled up with hailstones so we had to be very careful when we reopened them to make sure the hailstones went outside and not inside. We had gleaned from our pre-trip reading that the afternoon storms are a pretty regular occurrence.

From the door of the tent we could watch a group of Waterbuck grazing in the forest a short distance away along with a few Zebra. Where we were camped is about 500m north of the Equator and the top of Mt Kenya is about 20km by crow flight to the south-south-east. The peaks showed up briefly as the late afternoon storm passed and it really was an awesome sight.

Mt Kenya from Sirimon Gate - late afternoon