Gallery of Jim Blilie's Photos:

World Bicycle Tour, 1990-1992

The Big Show

Part 10:  Kenya

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010, All rights reserved

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning

all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas

and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts

of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues

from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance

which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can,

begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."  (Often attributed to Goethe)

  This page is under construction.  I'm still working on a text for each segment of the 

trip and scanning in some negatives and maybe a few more slides hidden here and there.

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These are THE BIG SHOW of my slides from my trip around the world with Jeff Mellor, 1990-1992.

There are many more slides in this set than on the main world tour page:  About 2600 total.  I spent

some time in late 2009 going through all my slides from the world trip and I selected many for scanning.

The results are on this page (slide shows).  Many of these have been seen only by me and many of those

I hadn't seen since 1993.  The trip itself is outlined below.

These are scans of my Kodachrome 64 (and a very small number of Ektachrome 100) slides

From Jim and Jeff Mellor's bicycle tour around the world from Nov-1990 through Oct-1992

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010 All rights reserved

I used a very nice, yet inexpensive scanner, the  Epson V500  I like it very much.

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Kenya, 29-Jul-1991 to 23-Aug-1991, no bikes

These are photos of our 4 weeks in Kenya.  We spent a fair bit of time in Nairobi; but the main

point of the visit was to see the game parks.  We joined up with a "tent safari" group, that included

my long-time friends Kevin and Jan.  We met the first morning of the safari trip.  On the safari,

we visited Masai Mara National Reserve, Amboseli National Park, famous for its views of Mount

Kilimanjaro and its large and numerous elephants, and Lake Nakuru famous for its flamingoes.

Jeff's knees were done in by trekking in Nepal, so I hiked across Mount Kenya National Park

with three other tourists, from Australia and New Zealand, which included climbing up Point Lenana,

the third highest peak of Mt. Kenya, and non-technical, 16,355 feet, the highest peak I've ascended

(Thorung La in Nepal was higher at 17,700 feet.)  We traversed the mountain from east to west.

It was a wonderful trek.

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For the slide show:  

Click HERE.  Then:

Click on the first picture (upper left picture) on the black photo album page and then

Click the "play" button at the upper right of the view panel to start the slide show.

Enjoy.

	Abbey Hotel, Nairobi	Road to Masai Mara	Rift Valley overlook
The Rift Valley			Trekking group, with Ben, our fantastic guide.  In the van.	In camp with a Tusker!
The group in camp	Masai Mara
	On the road in the van		Maasai woman and child	Camp dining tent
Sausage tree		Lions	The vans gather at every interesting came sighting	Zebras
	Cheetah on a kill, a Thompson's Gazelle		After the Cheetahs fill up, then vultures immediately descend	Then a hyena finishes up the last bits and bones
		Ben, with Claire and Helen	Buffalo skull
The safari crew.  Standing L-R:  Louise and Bill (UK), Jan (Netherlands), Kevin (Belgium), me. Seated, L-R:  Jim (USA), Helen (Australia), Claire (Australia), Jeff, and Ben, our Guide.	Maasai village	Maasai village	Maasai village (Kodacolor 100 on the left, Kodachrome 64 on the right)	Road to Masai Mara
Lake Nakuru	Lake Nakuru	Road to Amboseli	Amboseli National Park Kilimanjaro is faintly visible in the lower photo	Camp at night, Amboseli
Amboseli star trails				Splendid starlings
Camp Amboseli		Acacias		Really close!
Lots of elephants	Me at Amboseli		Acacias and sunset, Amboseli
Riding up to Mount Kenya with Helen and Claire and a guy whose name I can't remember	The road up to Mt. Kenya from Chogoria	The park border	At the tree line	Hiking up through the alpine upland terrain
Alpine uplands with tussock grass	Me on the way up with a BIG pack	Giant groundsels in the mist	Minto's hut at 14,000.  We camped nearby the first night	Frost in the morning at 14,000 feet, our camp near Minto's hut
Point Lenana (left) and Nelion and Batian (right) the three highest summits of Mount Kenya	The tarn	A rock hyrax, whose closest living relatives are the elephants	Nelion and Batian, the summits of Mount Kenya	L-R:  Claire, ?, Helen, me, camp at 14,000 feet
Groundsel just getting started	At dawn, it's clear.  By 10 am, the clouds have risen up to cover the mountain's upper slopes.  Just before sunset, they drop back down and the mountain comes clear.	Clouds clearing in the evening.  Helen and Claire were feeling the effects of altitude badly, so we spent two nights at 14,000 ft.	Camp at evening as the clouds clear off	Ready to head up to the Austrian Hut at 15,700 feet. General climbing info about Mt. Kenya
On the trail above 14,000 feet	Giant groundsels	A pass above 15,000 feet	View of Nelion (the true summit) from the Austrian Hut On this side, you can see the standard route up Nelion	Point Lenana, 16,355 feet
The Austrian Hut at 15,700 feet, where we spent the night	Sunrise at the Austrian Hut	Most of the way up Point Lenana, with Nelion and the Lewis Glacier in the background.  Glaciers within 10 miles of the equator!	Me, summit of Point Lenana	Summit views
Looking back down to the Austrian Hut	Looking back up at the Lewis Glacier and Point Lenana	Heading out	L-R:  Point John, Batian, Nelion, Lewis Glacier.  One of the great mountain views of the world	Batian and Nelion
Batian and the Diamond Glacier, nestled between Nelion and Batian	View of Mount Kenya from the west with groundsels	Classic view of Mount Kenya from the west.  Batian on the left, Nelion on the right, the Diamond Glacier in the middle.	Classic view of Mount Kenya from the west.  Batian on the left, Nelion on the right, the Diamond Glacier in the middle.
Back down into the clouds and the tussock grass	It really turned into a swamp lower down.  I'm glad we didn't come up this way.	Nairobi central market	At the Blukat restaurant, Nairobi: Excellent Indian food.	Statue of Jomo Kenyatta
Nairobi from a high-rise	Jomo Kenyatta Center		Jan, Jeff, and Kevin at our favorite Italian restaurant

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Outline of our trip:

From Nov. 15, 1990 to Oct. 6, 1992, with a five-month break for the winter of '91-'92, Jeff Mellor

and I traveled around the world through 26 countries, mostly by bicycle.  While in the "developed"

world, we bicycled 1000 miles per month, camping each night.  In Asia and Africa, we traveled by

train and bus and used guest-houses.  We encountered 16 different foreign languages, of which we

needed to learn at least the rudiments.  We rode a total of almost 11,000 miles on our bikes, camped out

at least 350 times, and climbed several mountains including Pt. Lenana (16,350 ft.) on Mt. Kenya in

Africa.  We took a three-week, 220-mile hike around the Annapurna Range in Nepal, which included

a 17,700 ft. high pass.  I took 13,000 photographs and wrote 1000 pages of journals.  No experience

in my life, except my university education, can compare with these travels for the depth and breadth

of learning or for the perspective gained.  It was one of the peak life experiences, up there with

marriage, children, university education.

Our trip was through these countries:

[Hawaii:  The Big Island, a 2-week shake-down within the US, started Nov 1990]

Fiji, about 10 days riding around Viti Levu from Nadi to Suva

New Zealand:  Auckland to Wellington via Coromandel Penn. and a loop around the Southern

Alps from Christchurch and back

Australia, from Sydney to Melbourne via Canberra and Mt. Kosciusko, around Tasmania, bits and

pieces inland mostly bus to Darwin

Singapore

Malaysia, from Singapore to the Thai border

Thailand (no bikes; we sent our bikes to Denmark from Bangkok, not wanting to ride in Thailand,

Nepal, India, Kenya, or Egypt)

Nepal (no bikes)

India (no bikes; just passed through Delhi and Bombay since we were running way behind)

and then on to a long tour of Europe:

Denmark

Germany

Netherlands

Belgium

France

United Kingdom

Then a winter's break at home in the USA from Oct 1991 through March 1992, then we flew

back to Lisbon Portugal in March 1992:

Portugal

Spain

France

UK, we rode from Plymouth to Land's End then from Land's End to John O'Groats at the tip of

Scotland and via ferries to the Orkneys, Shetlands, and on to Norway over the North Sea (with a

detour from Holyhead in Wales over to Ireland and back)

Ireland

Norway

Sweden

Germany (former East Germany)

Poland

Czech Republic

Austria

Germany (Bavaria) and home in Oct 1992 from Frankfurt am Main

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010, All rights reserved

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Time and mileage table:

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Background image is Cheetahs, Masai Mara NP, Kenya, 1991

Last updated:  4-Sep-2010