24 hours on Mt. Kenya

Or: Shooting an elephant in your pajamas

After five days of meetings and field trips regarding microfinance in and around Nairobi, I had a little more than 24-hours before my return flight. Fortunately, l was able to spend it at the Serena Mountain Lodge, 7,200 feet up the slopes of Mt. Kenya, overlooking a watering hole visited by a constant stream of local wildlife. You can actually shoot (photograph) an elephant in your pajamas—also Cape buffalo, bushbuck, waterbuck, forest hogs, hyenas, mongoose, genet, baboons and colobus monkeys.

From there, I hired a guide, driver and armed park ranger to take me “solo” hiking through the bamboo forest leading into the vertical bog that rings the volcano. We never made it to the bog. I spent the whole day pestering naturalist Benson Maina about the scat and spoor we were tracking, including a leopard with cub and a sina—an antelope that grows barely more than a foot tall.