Hi Patty. Ithumba looks a place of joy - really enjoyed looking at the pictures (is Mark taking credits now, though? . The photo of the little one with ears spread in the waterhole is great.

Yay! Great photos--report at your leisure. Food at Ithumba was fantastic. My compliments to the chef.

Oh, that was the wrong emoticon - out of practice! Just a normal smile would be enough! Just looked through the Tsavo West shots and wondered why I'm going to Botswana - so many interesting things to see there, even just after the rains.... although I'm not sure how hard you worked for that.

Oh, and very creative to get the cheetah shot iN Tsavo East!

Why 3 nights East and 5 nights West?

Patty, your photos are a joy to view as always. When will I ever get to Ithumba!

Fabulous photos Patty thanks, Ithumba looks outstanding!
We're now hoping we might be able to go in 2013, better late than never I guess.

Thanks, guys!

kimburu,
You know us, we don't work that hard! During our 5 nights, we took 2 full days and an afternoon off from game drives and just birded/Game Sat™ around camp. Saw baboons, vervets, Sykes monkeys, bushbuck, warthog, giraffe, hippo, crocs, mongoose and a bushbaby in camp. The 3/5 split just worked out due to logistics and having to work within the constraints of both of our frequent flier flights. We wanted a relatively simple and not astronomical way of getting Leely to the Mara next and there's the morning flight from West that connects to the morning Mara flight.

Patty, what a great after dinner treat for me. Appreciated the pictures. The ones of the elephant eye lashes, the orange bellied parrot, and tse tse trophies were extra special to me. Thanks for making my day! Now, gotta get to the Tsavo parks.
Dick

great photos. We follow the ithumba orphans on Sheldrick's as well as the babies at the orphanage in Nairobi. We're looking forward to seeing the orphanage in Sept.

We wanted a relatively simple and not astronomical way of getting Leely to the Mara next

This is Patty's delicate way of putting that they very kindly changed their plans for me. There is an airstrip near Ithumba but it's for charters only.

We saw more "big" game in Tsavo West (even though I was only there one day) but the part of Tsavo East by Ithumba has a real "We're out here entirely by ourselves and if we see anything other than elephants, dik diks, skittish kudu and ground squirrels it will be very special" feel. And so it does feel very special. You somehow naturally recalibrate.

How pole is "pole pole"?

Thanks, Dick and stamiya! Sorry for the delay. We're heading out of town for a bit and I hope to get back into this when we return.

Hi Patty!

Just got back from Mongolia a few days ago*, and I'm so happy to see your pictures and your report. Looks like you guys had a fabulous time, too! This especially makes me want to visit Ithumba someday... Thanks for sharing!!


* (We had an amazing trip -- I've now affirmatively answered this question for myself: "Can I ever love a place as much as I love Africa?")

Will this be a joint report compliments of Patty and Leely? Welcome back MyDogKyle!

As it turned out pole, pole meant extremely pole, pole but here's my very belated trip report almost 2 years later. Don't know if anyone is still even interested in reading it anymore and I might run of out steam again (no promises ) but here's at least the start of it.

Flight @#%& and Nairobi
Thunderstorms in ATL forced a ground stop at the airport. It didn’t last too long so I was still hopeful that we would make our AMS connection as we set underway. Unfortunately the taxi queue was so long that we started running low on fuel. Back to the gate to refuel and realizing we were never going to make it to NBO by the following day, I started rearranging our hotel accommodations. I had booked our first night at the Holiday Inn and our second at the Hilton (including a second room for Leely) due to having hotel points in different accounts (I have a habit of doing this often, creating more hassle for myself). First call was to the Holiday Inn and while we couldn’t cancel, they did let us move our reservation to the following night. I also had to add a second room and cancel our Hilton reservation. This was accomplished with Joyce’s help as I didn’t know when they were going to ask us to turn our phones off again. I was emailing Joyce as I was on hold. Not sure if I had a chance to inform Leely or if she was surprised when her E&S driver dropped her off at a different hotel.

Our flight reaccommodation was as smooth as can be expected with someone waiting at our arrival gate at AMS with our new boarding passes routed through DXB. At the lounge I tried to change to the evening KQ nonstop but there was no space. In any case, the DXB flight actually got in a little earlier. Boarding in DXB was an interesting experience. I’ve never seen such a free for all rush with so much pushing and shoving. We finally arrived in NBO at 6:50am 2 days after leaving LAX and were amazed to be reunited with our bags! We were met by our new guide Ben and set off just before 7:30am. What to do now? Since we’d never been to Nairobi National Park this seemed like the perfect thing to do. Traffic was pretty heavy and it took about an hour and a half to get to the main gate (remember we hadn’t planned on this or we probably could’ve entered through some other gate). We paid our $40 per person plus 1300 KES for the vehicle entry fee and set off on a couple of hours game drive. We managed to see giraffe, Coke’s hartebeest, ostrich, zebra, buffalo, impala, hippo, crowned crane, kori bustard, helmeted guinea fowl, hammerkop and saddle billed stork. No rhino. Back out the main gate and we headed to Sheldrick to pay for our stay at Ithumba. I also bought a fleece jacket as it was cold and wet in Nairobi and I hadn’t brought anything heavy because we were spending all of our time in Tsavo. We also learned a bit about the new Umani Springs camp under construction.

We had arranged to have lunch with Serah and Julius of Eastern and Southern at the Verandah restaurant at Utamaduni prior to our departure so that was our next destination. We had a nice lunch of Zanzibar soup and curry chicken while talking about the southern Rift Valley and future vehicle acquisition. It was good to see them both again and we gave Julius a small travel guitar that Mark had built. After lunch we headed to the Sarit Centre where Mark got some furry Bata boots and I picked up some recycled paper necklaces from Banana Box. We checked into the Holiday Inn in the late afternoon and Leely arrived a couple of hours later direct from Rwanda. This is a lovely hotel in Westlands with multiple 2 story buildings spread out over a garden setting. It’s also no longer a Holiday Inn and is now the Southern Sun Mayfair. The 3 of us grabbed dinner at the hotel which I can only describe as Kenyan style Tex Mex while Leely raved about her gorilla trekking experiences. Off to bed by 8:00pm and amazed we stayed awake this long.

Off to Ithumba
We set off just after 7:00am stopping at a Nakumatt on the way out of the city to provision for Ithumba. Not having been to Ithumba, Ben and Leely were concerned about a) starvation and b) running out of toilet paper. Mark or I would grab one pack of something and they’d quickly grab another. We ended up way overbuying and left a lot of food for the guys working there and enough toilet paper for the remainder of the year

There were some detours for construction on the Mombasa Hwy and traffic was completely stopped the other direction just before Machakos as the presidential motorcade was heading there. We reached Kibwezi shortly after 1:00pm, refueled and turned off the highway. Even with the rains in May, the road was not much worse than the previous drought year. We arrived at the Kasala gate around 3:30pm and saw our first herd of wild eles by a waterhole. Some ground squirrels, lesser kudu and dik dik were spotted on the short drive to the park headquarters. After checking in at the HQ (they don’t do it at the gate here), we proceeded to drive the short distance to Ithumba camp meeting up with Wendi’s group along the way. Wendi came right up to the vehicle and proceeded to sniff me all over with her trunk through the hatch covering me in red Tsavo dust. What a welcome! There was a little bit of playful shoving of the vehicle too but eventually the herd moved aside and we continued to camp.

Finally! I'm looking forward to reading about the rest of your trip.

Lazy days at Ithumba
Our routine at Ithumba consisted of Mark getting up and making coffee at 5:00am (the guys were more than happy to hand over the kitchen keys to us), off to the stockade just before 6:00am, back to camp for a big breakfast, head to the mudbath around 11:00am, back for a light lunch of cold cuts/leftovers/whatever so only 2 meals needed to be prepared, lounge around on the upper deck watching the waterholes and scanning the horizon for wildlife, back to the stockade in the late afternoon, then back to camp for dinner.

Those early morning hours were when some game viewing adventures and misadventures occurred. One morning Mark nearly stepped on a puff adder. Good thing he had a bright torch. Another morning we heard something crunching outside of our tent to discover 3 bat eared foxes. It appeared they were using the kerosene lamps outside of our tent to hunt for insects. One fox started walking up to Mark, barked twice and ran off. There was also a genet hanging around and we saw a springhare and white tailed mongoose.

One day Leely, Petra, Sammy and Ben did go on a game drive to Somalia. Mark and I stayed back at camp and asked Ben to just leave us the keys so we could drive to the mudbath. He didn’t hesitate before tossing them to us. Julius would never do that. What was a tiny mudhole had become a lake with the rains. We were able to see the whole crew at the mudbath, Yatta’s group, Wendi’s group, the keeper dependent orphans and a few wild friends. We got some foot massages and the guys got to experience Nasalot’s version of a Flowbee (apparently she only does this to men). Upon seeing Ben later, he asked if we had any trouble with the van (the battery had been acting up) to which we replied we just gave the battery a good smack with his spotting scope and the van started up right away.

That same morning we had arrived at the stockade to find Sian down. We initially thought she was dead but she was still alive and it took 9-10 keepers to get her back on her feet. It was heart wrenching and we all stopped taking pictures and video. Later that afternoon she looked much better but we learned while in Amsterdam that she died.

Game spotted from the upper deck included buffalo, zebra, warthog, baboon, dik dik and a cheetah very far away. Mark spotted it and Ben set up his scope so we could confirm the sighting. We guessed that it was several km away. We learned that there was a water source in that area and decided that would be a good place to game drive next time. You don’t see a lot here but what you do see is very special. Combined with the beautiful landscape and sense of having no one else around, it’s truly magical.

Oh I almost forgot the kuku. By night three we had some not so fresh smelling beef and chicken left. The fridge at Ithumba isn’t super cold and we should’ve probably stored our meat in the freezer. We all gathered around the kitchen and debated which was less likely to kill us with Leely and I voting for a vegetarian dinner and Sammy saying he’d rather go hungry than eat a vegetarian dinner and Mark concurring. Leely and I were out voted in the end and Mark ended up making a stir fry after cooking the kuku to death first. Kimwele, Njagi and Josephat also joined us for dinner every evening. Njagi remarked that he’d never had Chinese food before to which I replied and you still haven’t As far as I know, no one was poisoned that evening.

It was in Paris, not Amsterdam, that we found out about Sian's death. It's been so long I don't even remember where I was.

The kuku dish turned out to be a bit hit BTW.

That kuku with rice was by far the favorite of the Kenyans with us.

This is very helpful b/c it is reminding me what I need to do at Ithumba. 5am!!!

They all went back for seconds, didn't they?

East meets West
The genet came to say goodbye and we left fairly early for the drive to Tsavo West. We were told a river crossing wasn’t possible so returned to Kibwezi over mostly the same road except for a “shortcut” to Ikutha. According to all of the villagers we passed, this road was nzuri sana. We didn’t think it quite as nzuri as they did and I’m not sure it saved us much time. The road came out by the Air View Lodge in Ikutha complete with a plane painted on the side. Was it under the flight path of aircraft going to and from Ithumba airstrip?

From Kibwezi it took about an hour to Mtito Andei gate where we entered Tsavo West. Immediately we noticed the change in landscape and greater abundance of game. We detoured around Ngulia Valley looking for dogs but finding a leopard instead. Zebra, lesser kudu, ostrich, fringe eared oryx, giraffe waterbuck, a monitor lizard and many vultures on a zebra carcass were some of the other game encountered. We arrived at Finch Hattons in the early afternoon and got our favorite tent #7. They initially tried to put us in a refurbished tent but we wanted to be by the hippos.

A very cheeky vervet monkey grabbed my bread roll with lightening fast speed at lunch. The second time he tried I was ready to chase him away. Leely and I went on an afternoon game drive while Mark stayed back at camp. We came across some baboon, black backed jackal, banded mongoose, southern ground hornbill and a few but not too many tsetses. The next morning we say goodbye to Leely as she’s off the to Mara. She wanted to know how she was going to get to the airstrip and we told her it was not too far of a walk and to remember to run up and down the airstrip to clear the zebra off No, we took her and waited with her of course. The plane arrived at 8:30am but 2 passengers from Kilaguni were missing. The pilot declared he was going to wait a few more minutes and shortly after a truck came roaring in with a cloud of dust and the driver gave a big thumbs up when he pulled to a stop.

Our remaining time at Finch Hattons was spent going on a few game drives, walking around camp and some more lazy game viewing from our verandah. It’s hard to tear ourselves away from the springs as there always seems to be something interesting going on. Late afternoons and early mornings were special as the birds came in to roost or were departing for the day. The kiboko alarm goes off here at 4:30am, sometimes they let you sleep til 5:00am so we never missed the morning fly out. The birding was also excellent during the day in camp.

One day it was suggested that we should take a walk with David one of the housekeepers as he was an avid birder to the hinterlands of the camp where they had torn down some of the original tents and there was a clearing with some wetlands beyond. It was a paradisiacal scene and I was able to get some nice (for me) jacana shots. This wasn’t an organized activity or anything we paid for. At the end of our stay we thanked David by leaving him my copy of the Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania.

On one morning game drive, we spotted a pride of 10 lions. They were still some distance from the road when we saw them. We stopped the car and they slowly walked our way crossing the road in front of us. It took them a while to across. Half of them sat down next to the road, rolled around and the cubs growled at us a bit before deciding to finish crossing. We had this to ourselves until they were on the other side before 2 other vehicles arrived. We decided this was way too crowded for us and left them to their viewing.

On our last morning at camp, we were awoken by the hippos again, had coffee with the herons and hammerkops and spotted 2 bushbuck and some Skyes monkeys. We said goodbye to everyone, headed out at 9:00am and exited Mtito gate 2 hours later. I used the restroom here. They were clean! They had paper! The toilets flushed! And they had soap! We headed toward Kibwezi and turned south at the Chyulu Hills NP sign as I had wanted to stop at the Sheldrick Umani Springs camp under construction. This was about a 40 minute detour one way off the highway, 10 minutes of nzuri sana, 30 minutes of African massage. They were surprised to see us but gave us a little tour. The main building and sleeping cottages overlook the swamps where we were told eles and buffalo visit.

We stopped at Hunter’s Lodge for lunch and dined outdoors by the springs. The setting is nice, too bad about the state of the lodge. We saw marabou stork, black headed and purple herons, hadada ibis and vervet monkeys. There was a dead fish on the floor inside the lodge. Not sure when they were planning to serve that. We had some thoroughly cooked but very tough beef instead. Sometime during the drive Mark mentioned he needed a "bush break" (that was the exact term he used). Instead of driving the couple of km or so to the next gas station, Ben immediately pulls over on the side of the Mombasa Hwy. Julius would never do that. It was all I could do to keep myself from falling over laughing. Ben took him quite literally

We had planned on taking our time and arrived at the airport at 6:00pm for our evening flight. We said goodbye to Ben, contemplated our return but have yet to get back.

Great report, nice to read about that trip again. some great highlights.

Thanks, it was fun reliving it!

Just FYI, I've recently learned that the couple who owned Eastern & Southern Safaris have separated. The wife, Serah, who was always the driving force behind the company has since joined another company. She can be reached at serah@trevarontours.com and is hoping to bring many of the guides formerly with ESS on board.

I hope everyone is okay. Something like this can be devastating to many livelihoods/lives in Kenya (and elsewhere).

Oh, I hope everyone is okay, too...

Thanks so much for this. I spent 3 days in Ithumba in April....I will be there for 7 next year.

ElizabethAD, have you done a trip report, I'd love to read it, trying to get as much info on Ithumba for our visit next year?

Yes, yes, report please

Thank you for the update, Patty.

Just updating the photo links for the Kodakgallery albums that were transferred to Shutterfly:

Nairobi http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AZNnDlk5Ytmbzg

Ithumba http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AZNnDlk5Ytmbxo

Finch Hattons http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AZNnDlk5Ytmb3w

Can anyone give me contact details for Ithumba please? I've tried http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/ but can't see anything about the camp, and can't find it mentioned on agent's websites which makes me wonder if it is still operating. Any news welcome!

You can email Lina at the trust.

emtrust AT africaonline DOT co DOT ke

Using the symbols instead of the words I've capitalized.

Thanks, Leely (who was just there and can confirm it's still operating, trip report? ).

tockoloshe,
I don't think any of the 3 self catering camps/houses are on the Sheldrick website as they're for foster parents/donors. In addition to Ithumba, there's a camp at Umani Springs in the Kibwezi forest and a private house on the Peregrine conservancy bordering Tsavo East (these two aren't relocation sites though). The trust can send you information by email and you can book directly with them. Ithumba can get booked up fairly early.

Thanks Patty, Leely
If I've understood you booked directly with Ithumba but all transport through Eastern and Southern (with driver Ben)? Would you recommend self-drive if it were just to Ithumba from Nairobi?
Thanks

Yes I booked Ithumba directly and arranged transport with Eastern & Southern. You could self drive and it's a fairly straight forward drive. The worst part is getting out of Nairobi. After that you're on the Mombasa Hwy to Kibwezi, then a series of dirt roads heading northeast that will take approx 2-3 hours depending on conditions.

Thanks, will start investigating options!

I have another report from our first stay at Ithumba that goes into a little more detail about the camp http://www.fodors.com/community/africa-the-middle-east/my-those-are-big-orphans-adventures-of-joyce-rod-mark-patty-in-kenya.cfm

From what I understand, they no longer allow guests to do the feedings but you can still visit 3x a day.

Thanks, yes, I've read all your reports! Using them to work through some itinerary ideas.

It might be that Ithumba is not suitable for us anyway being just 2 people, but if they allow visits from outside that would be good, even if the interaction is not so 'hands on'.