Homeliness and exclusivity at Kenya’s Solio Reserve

Rosemary Behan

“Hmm. Not sure about that company - think it might be a budget outfit." Mark Barrah, who has been helping to finish build Solio Lodge, Kenya's newest luxury safari lodge, is right. I've chosen the no-frills route up and down Mt Kenya, complete with a dodgy guide, overloaded porter and transfers by 1970s Land Rovers. Yet, with a choice of either tents or freezing bunkhouses, 3am starts, blisters, and no electricity, heating or showers, there is no luxury way of climbing Africa's second-highest mountain. Ava Paton, the newly appointed South African manager of Solio Lodge, can only shudder when she drops me off in Nanyuki before the climb. "You wouldn't catch me dead doing that," she says. "Rather you than me."

When I emerge back in Nanyuki three days later, I've a world of stories to tell, of mice in the dormitories, backpackers with altitude sickness, sleepless nights in sleeping bags, snowstorms at the summit and a seven-hour soaking on the way down. And of my guide's deadly body odour, which Ava gets a whiff of when he hitches a ride to nearby Nyeri. There are also my feet, the heels of which have been literally rubbed raw by the wet hike down. Ava cringes when she sees them.

Yet none of this matters, because I've climbed the mountain, dodged death and am now on my way back to Solio, sandwiched between Mount Kenya and the Aberdares mountain range on the Laikipia Plateau. There is, of course, an easier way of getting here: daily scheduled flights from Nairobi to Nanyuki, or, for private charters, Solio has its very own airstrip.

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