Farewell Alan and onto the Rift Valley

Two more days recording Kodhi and we are making progress. We wind up our stay with a delicious farewell lunch with our generous host, Alan Donovan.

A local journalist joins us and interviews Ayub who answers her questions thoughtfully with a relaxed demeanour.

Back on the road back to Nairobi, our hearts are racing after we very narrowly avoid a head-on collision with a lorry that veered out into our lane to overtake another vehicle.

At stupid o’clock (5am Monday morning) we jump in the car with our driver, Dan, and cross Nairobi and head for the Rift Valley. Getting up at this unearthly hour means dodging hours of sitting in polluted city traffic.

I’m under the delusion that it’s still summer and dress in shorts and T-shirt for the ride. It’s very cold. Dan has a carpet stuck on his dashboard (as is fashionable here), so the screen heater doesn’t work. We have to have the windows open to stop the windshield misting up and the cold wind blows into the car for the entire two hour journey. Even with Dan’s blanket, I’m still cold.

We climb up the hills that precede the Rift and it’s an amazing view at the top. Dawn has just broken and we can see a large extinct volcano poking up out of the valley many miles away.