Lost for 15 hours

2:30 am, with no cops in sight, we make a wrong turn into Ngong Road heading to town while leaving Naivas supermarket at the green house. The first wrong right turn of the day. Then we drive towards prestige to look for a Chemist. My friend needed to buy dawa which he did not need until the following day. I ask him, ‘must we buy them now?’ He says ‘yes.’ Then added, ‘I do not want to forget them when coming back.’ I laughed. Either he was still asleep or he had had something intoxicating. But sleep makes one dumb sometimes anyway. We found the Chemist at the Oil Libya closed. So if you know the guy who owns the place, tell him or her that they are missing out on half asleep clients. On our way out, we had told the guard at the gate that we would be back in a bit. Unbeknown to all of us, it would be more than 24 hours. He must have been wondering what happed. Here’s what happened!

The plan had been simple. Make it to Aberdares by 5 am, start hiking latest by 6 am, summit elephant hill by 9 am, be at Kinangop peak by 1 pm, and finally be at the gate by 5 pm. We had a water tight plan. Nothing would cloud our vision. We set off at 6am, we were on steroids. Sleep induced energy. We made it to the elephant hill peak at 9 am. We had hit the first target of the day.

After a short rest, we were again on our way. To summit Kinangop peak, you have to go down. It is like a pendulum, going down to be able to launch. As we were going doing, the skies started clogging up. A thick fog was taking over the skies. We could no longer see Kinangop, and elephant hill was quickly getting hidden.  Unfazed, we continued walking. The guide said he had an alternative route that would get us there faster. We followed him. When we got to the river, there was a sharp cliff we have to jump. Though it had rained the previous night, it was not too wet. We jumped and missed the river by an inch. This would be our first encounter with the river.

We started walking up, at this point we could barely see a distance of over 100 meters. We decide to lie and wait. Lie and wait for the sun. When the sky is clogged, only the sun can seduce the sky. After about 15 minutes, and when we were about to give up on our quest, by some miracle the sun showed up and the peak peeped right in front of us. It was like looking for a needle in a pile of stones, just when you are about to give up, you see it peeping from a crevice. My pal was elated. He blurted, “soon we will have bragging rights. We’ve done Kinangop in a day.” We would be among the chosen few. We start our climb up and in 30 minutes, we are at the peak. 1:15 pm. Second target of the day met!

After 15 minutes, we are on our way back. We have a timeline to beat. Something interesting happens between my pal who is a seasoned hiker (he was here two weeks ago) and the guard. They start arguing on the correct route back, my pal name drops and tells the guard. “You see, Raphael (Raphael is the Don of this mountain. He knows it like the trigger of his gun) said when going up, we take left, and when coming down, we take right.” My pal spoke with authority, the guard seemed intimidated though he had a gun. You cannot intimidate a man with a gun, but he did. 

We took a right, the second wrong right of the day, and started descending, this time very fast. We’d get to a point and my pal would say, “this place looks familiar, we crossed it last week.” We kept going. However, at this point, we could barely see anything beyond 200 metres. See, when coming down Kinangop, you aim for elephant hill. If you cannot see it, it means you are trapped. Lost even.  Like a dog trapped in a hole, we kept digging. After 2 hours, we figured we were lost.

The guard said the only way out is to aim for the river. When lost in a forest, aim for the river. We walked. And walked. And walked. At 6.30 pm, we found the river bed. We started walking downstream along the river bed. As fate would have it, a section of the river bank caved in and we all fell into the river. Knee deep. We were now soaking wet. It didn’t matter now, we continued walking on the shallow ends of the river. We had a dipstick to estimate the depth. Fun, right? But not until you encounter a waterfall. Waterfalls are beautiful to watch, soothing to listen to but very dangerous to be at either end of it, especially the top. 

You see, we were following the river downstream. At night, it is even more dangerous. We couldn’t continue walking on the river bed. We decided to walk parallel to the river. Somehow, the river would lead us out. With the lurking danger, we opted for the bamboo forest. See, this is not the bamboo forest as you know it. Not the long, free standing, yellow, and inviting bamboo, the well-kept bamboo. It is the young uncontained bamboo. A bamboo fighting for its place. A bamboo that’s shaggy and rugged. A bamboo shadowed by the old hardwood trees that dot a rain forest. A perky bamboo oiled up by youth.

As you can Imagine, there was no clear path, but we somehow had to find a way, and we did. And that left us tired to the bone. Our guide would walk ahead of us, with a gun on one hand, a torch in his mouth and the right hand was to make a way. He was like Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt with His gun as a staff. Only this time we were not the entitled pricks the children of Israel were. We dutifully followed.

After walking for four hours, with cold feet, numb hands from the cold and the stinging nettle, our guide was both tired and frustrated. There was no way we were going to find a way out at night. He said the inevitable.  “Naona tulale, tuanze safari kesho.” It was 10 pm. My pal said “sawa.” I couldn’t believe it. I asked, “tulale wapi?” I am sure the guide must have thought, “kwa mto kuna kitanda.” But he couldn’t dare say it. I can be dramatic at times, but this was not the time. Not because we were lost, but because this guy had a gun. A man with a gun gets away with many things. Even with murder. He could even kill us and say we were poachers who had lured him. And when we attacked him with a knife, he acted in self-defense.  Perfect script!

Remember in the 90s when parents would hand those old plaques in the house written “Christ is the head of the home, the unseen guest of every meal, the silent listener to every conversation?” That’s what a gun is, only this time it is a seen guest. A gun has a life of its own. It’s like a father with a young son. The father needs not say, “You can count on me”, yet his mere presence is reassuring. It gives you a I-have-got-this-feeling. Even with all the bamboo, the flowing river and the open skies, the gun was not fazed by anything, it just lay there like a lion on a stone watching the jungle and the sunset. That gun was the only reason we could manage to catch some sleep.

We decided to sleep, rather, spend the night there.

We slept. Well, they did, I didn’t. How do you sleep when your feet are frozen, your whole boy is shaking and the only decent meal you had was lunch the previous day? It is easier to sleep with a full stomach. In ten minutes, my pal was deep asleep. Ten minutes. And he slept for the rest of the night.I, on the other hand slept for one and a half hours.

Before we slept, my friend had asked, ‘Kuna wanyama?’ A Hyena laughed somewhere in the thicket. I swear. I heard it.

The guard also laughed, then said’ “Kuna nyati na ndovu. Lakini hawawezi fika hapa. Mnyama anayeweza fika hapa ni fisi.”

I asked ‘Fisi?’ He said, ‘eeh, na wanapenda nyama ya binadamu sana.’

It was not funny anymore. But I added, “basi tuko wengi.” My pal was already snoring. And we watched him sleep for the rest of the night.