I am in the Nairobi Central Business District, sitting in a Nanyuki bound shuttle. It is 2 o’clock and the January sun is unforgiving. I am by and large a stoic traveler and I quietly bake while the little bus slowly fills up. Nairobi’s ubiquitous hawkers circle the vehicle like so many satellites, displaying their wares. They’ve certainly done their homework. For a bus headed upcountry the merchandise on display is apt: a set of screw drivers that fold away like a penknife, the inevitable padlocks, and a new addition to the repertoire: a solar-powered cell-phone charger with little detachable plugs designed to accommodate the most popular brands. This last interests me and I bargain the man down to two hundred shillings, from a high of eight hundred and fifty. Good Buy I think. If it doesn’t pack up in a couple of days.
Getting out of the NCBD is the usual battle of wits between innumerable taxis, matatus, buses and countless private cars. Our driver is obviously a veteran and holds his own. There is evident relief when we leave the city traffic behind and join the super highway. The infamous traffic gridlock of Thika Road is largely absent at this time and, even on the unfinished sections, traffic flows unhindered. I have not been this way for several weeks. Even a couple of months’ absence from this route and the change is tremendous. Carpet-smooth wide lanes, quite a few flyovers, gleaming guard-rails; motoring has never been sweeter. The first dim spot occurs at Githurai. The driver urgently urges everyone to slide their windows shut. The young men lurking on the curb are apparently ‘snatch and grab artists’ taking advantage of slow moving traffic on this section to snatch phones and handbags through the open windows. Well. You live and learn. On my right many apartment blocks apparently flung down haphazardly ruin the splendid vista. Thankfully, we soon leave the human anthills behind and the scenery changes to open savannah. My fellow travellers, three women, one child, and two men are not the garrulous kind and a blessed silence reigns in the shuttle. We slow down at a road bump and I spot two Muslim ladies dressed completely in black from head to toe. In this blazing sun that’s got to hurt! The Chinese appear to be doing a sterling job on the road construction but ironies abound: the earth movers (Hitachi and Hyundai and Volvo) are from Japan, South Korea and Sweden; the trucks (Isuzu) are Japanese and of course the labour force is Kenyan. Yet when all is said and done and the road finally commissioned, China will bag all the glory! Anyway they built the Great Wall: this should be a breeze. We are moving along at a fair clip but out of nowhere a metallic-blue Vitz zooms past us and we’re all agape: it must be turbo-charged. Or the driver is! Either way there’s a moral there somewhere. If there is a God, He surely must hate donkeys. One grey fellow labours up a steep incline drawing behind him a wooden cart fully loaded with water jerricans. At least one hopes it is water and not moonshine. Along the way, the open grassland gives way to even more unappetizing habitations; grey, squat concrete buildings with not a lick of paint between them.
We drive on towards and past Thika and the very air changes. On the right are acres and acres of pineapples. The management here surely owes me a nod of thanks: I’ve probably drunk a liquid tonne of the stuff in my time. A lonely guard sits alone in a World War II-style watch tower on the lookout for trespassers. The savannah has given way to hilly terrain, still green in spite of Old Sol’s efforts. Past the woods of Makuyu and fruit stalls start to show up regularly: it seems mangoes are in season. The vegetation gets noticeably thicker and the dwellings have taken a decidedly rural air. Quaintly named bars dot the roadside: Top Life, Budget Inn, Hot Pot Motel and, with a curious nod to Ireland, Shamrock Hotel, and many others. We whiz past bags of charcoal for sale along the route. Soon we are across the Sagana River which is a symbolic divide. Now we know we are truly on our way to Nanyuki. Rice country, this. The many rice stalls by the road are fair testament to this. This road also serves the Mount Kenya and Isiolo tourist circuit. This explains the sudden appearance of curio shops on the way. Small-scale coffee plantations come almost to the tarmac. The green and grey tarpaulins hanging on lines herald our entry into Karatina with its sprawling, second-hand clothing, open-air market. Into Kiganjo and the air is decidedly cooler. We’ve been climbing steadily for the last two hours, it is early evening, and a slight chill has set in. Nanyuki is a mere 48 km away when we are flagged down by a tall, heavy-set policeman. He has a big, brown jolly face. There is nothing cursory about his inspection of the driver’s licence and the vehicle’s insurance certificate though. Satisfied, he beams at everyone in general and waves us on. The mountain suddenly heaves in sight, the peak shrouded in cloud, the sun dappling the lower slopes. The sight never palls and there is a sense of coming home. I cannot wait for morning to take a peek before the clouds set in. Two of my fellow travellers, bound for Isiolo, are just as spell bound. The others, evidently Nanyuki residents barely give it a glance. It is easy to see why it was once revered as the abode of God by the ancients. There is a sense of uncompromising majesty about the mountain and I promise myself for the umpteenth time that I must make the ascent. Someday. Hopefully before dotage sets in. Three hours, almost to the minute since we left Nairobi, we pull into Nanuyki.
