Kenya and Rwanda

We’re coming to the end of our time in Rwanda today. Alice is binging Nobody Wants This and laughing loudly to herself on the bed, while I’m editing some photos and catching up on my journal in our lodge in the hills of northern Rwanda. There’s fog rolling slowly through the volcanoes in the distance outside, which makes the crackling fireplace in our room feel particularly cozy.

It’s hard to believe we are only about a week into this adventure. Here’s a picture for each day of our trip so far. I didn’t actually plan this to be “one day, one picture”, but that concept seems kind of nice, and I think I’ll try to keep it up.

Our life for the next nine months

Taken on the morning of our flight to Nairobi in Jesse's apartment. We've learned that you really don't need a whole lot to be comfortable while traveling; a carry-on and a backpack are more than enough.

Morning at Elephant Watch Camp

Our first stop was Elephant Watch Camp in the Samburu National Reserve in northern Kenya. Nestled on the bank of the Ewaso Nyiro River, the camp is affiliated with Save the Elephants, one of the world's foremost elephant conservation organizations. We got to visit their research facility and were treated like family by the amazing staff, who were all local Samburu people. The camp was run in an incredibly eco-friendly way; we showered using a clever system that was powered by a bucket of water warmed by the afternoon sun; realizing how much water we waste by default in "real" showers was jarring.

A First Lady at sunset

Our guides at Elephant Watch Camp work closely with Save the Elephants and had an amazingly intimate knowledge of the elephants in Samburu. There are about a thousand of them in the reserve at any given time. Serenoi, our guide, could identify several hundred, often by the shape of their ears, which are unique to each elephant, like a fingerprint. This particular elephant was a member of the "First Ladies" family.

Up close and personal

The elephants in Samburu are super comfortable with humans given their interactions of the conservationists, including Save the Elephants. Elephants from big bulls to matriarchs to babies came up close to us enough that their trunks were practically in our Land Cruiser. On our last day, we ate lunch in our car as an elephant scratched itself on a tree right next to step, after having taken a swim. Not too long after, we saw a herd of more than forty elephants having a beach day on the river bank.

Arriving at Bisate

After three nights at Elephant Watch Camp, we made our way to Wilderness Bisate, nestled in the hills of the Rwandan countryside. On the three-hour drive from Kigali, we were struck by how similar Rwanda looked and felt to my dad's homeland in Yunnan Province, China, both in terms of natural environment and the way people live. Here and there, weather seems to be a permanent perfect 70F, the rolling mountains and hills create a super interesting landscape, and the lifestyle in the countryside reminded us that traveling is not only about seeing how differently people around the world live, but also all the ways in which we are similar.

Making our way through the rainforest

We came to Rwanda to find gorillas in the rainforest. There are about a thousand mountain gorillas left on the planet, living only around the tripoint of Rwanda, the DRC, and Uganda. They live in families of around twenty, led by the oldest silverback. Trackers follow these families throughout the day, keeping tabs on where they sleep and how they move, so that visitors can trek a few hours into the forest to spend time with them.

A troublemaker

We spent an hour with each of the Kwitonda and Sabyinyo gorilla families. With the Kwitonda family, a silverback beat his chest and charged towards us, giving Alice a proper scare, and we accidentally stepped into a fire ant nest, which gave me a proper scare. With the Sabyinyo family, we watched a "troublemaker" (a young male) make himself a little nest so he could relax while peeling bamboo shoots for a tasty lunch, and saw Big Ben, the only bald silverback in the forest. The gorillas here are habituated to humans, so we were able to look them in the eye, which was a really special experience, as if we were looking back hundreds of thousands of years into the past.