[aah78]

Originally Posted by saurabh89

I am not finding an option to upload the video directly, hence the screenshot!

You can upload the video to YouTube and share the link here if you wish to.

[saurabh89]

A weekend before we visited Maasai Mara, we went to a sightly unconventional National Park in Kenya. The place has a special mention in the history books of Africa for its unique topography. I am talking about the Hell's gate national park!

The most interesting part about this sanctuary full of herbivorous is that you can CYCLE through the national park, along with wild animals!! Yes, you read that right! Even I was amazed when I experienced it, as you are right now:


Hells gate is located close to Lake Naivasha and both can be covered in a day from Nairobi.



The park entry fees are 10 $ pp for foreign nationals and a cycle can be rented for another 4$ (if I remember that correctly). There is a 14 km trail inside the NP for cycling and its a worthwhile experience to witness animals.




Our guide explained us about different species of animals found inside the park and we could find big herds of Giraffes and Zebras inside the jungle. Compared to Maasai Mara, this part of Kenya does have trees and its not much like a savanna.



First sighting of a zebra:





The guide then took us inside the gorge this part is actually famous for! The place was used by tribals to hide during the war of 50's.





We could spot a few deers on our way back:






We then visited Naivasha Lake bird sanctuary which is 10 kms away from Hells gate. Lunch was a sumptuous combination of fish fry and chicken besides the lake. There a multiple restaurants at the entry of Naivasha village and one needs to book a boat for safari inside the lake at these restaurants. We could crack a cheap deal for 15$ pp for 9 people in 2 boats. Each boat can carry 6 people at max. The riders were pretty much aware about the birds present inside the lake at that point of time it took us more than 2 hours to explore the park.

Few of the birds I could click:

A Cormorant:


A golden crowned Crane:


A long tailed Cormorant:


The Hammercots (found only in africa):


Pink back Pelicans:


Cant recall this bird:




Pelican:



The journey back home to Nairobi took slightly longer thanks to the traffic and an accident. The plan was to visit the rift valley (birth of human civilization happened here) on the way back home but lack of sunlight prevented us from taking the detour.

Will wrap it up with this pic I adore the most!! (Yup, thats me )



Hope you enjoyed reading through this one. Will write about Zanzibar some day later.

- Saurabh Sathe

[arindambasu13]

Originally Posted by saurabh89

The most interesting part about this sanctuary full of herbivorous is that you can CYCLE through the national park, along with wild animals!! Yes, you read that right! Even I was amazed when I experienced it, as you are right now

Wow...thats really unique! However, this also looks really dangerous, isn't it? I mean, what about the safety aspects? If a wild animal is provoked for some reason and attacks a cyclist, is there any safety measure in place?

[saurabh89]

Originally Posted by arindambasu13

Wow...thats really unique! However, this also looks really dangerous, isn't it? I mean, what about the safety aspects? If a wild animal is provoked for some reason and attacks a cyclist, is there any safety measure in place?

The guides travel all the time with cyclists. Also there are no carnivorous animals inside the park. We were scared a bit at the beginning but then our journey was awesome fun. We found the animals to be shy. Also we had our pickup van traveling just behind our cycles for any averse situation but most people don't opt for that option.

Zebras, Giraffes, Gazelle family and Timbas (forgot their actual name) are not affected by humans around. Also the part is not the one in limelight, so a lot of people don't visit the place often, so there has been minimal human intervention.