Lake Turkana: Days 3 & 4

After spending two nights at the Samburu game reserve, we left bright an early at 6:30 a.m. to continue our trip north to Lake Turkana. The third day was spent mostly driving; yet, despite the horrible road conditions, it was quite enjoyable. We drove through some of the most beautiful, untouched areas of Kenya and stopped off several times to get out and take pictures and to just generally enjoy the scenery. Some of the sites we stopped off at included an enormous crater, a lush mountain overlook, and a natural lake where there were herds of water buffalo, elephants, and baboons. All the sites we stopped at were extremely peaceful and serene and almost one hundred percent uninhabited. Of all the land we covered, several hundred miles in one day, we never once passed another car. Furthermore, the only human life we saw were a few random herders with their animals in remote areas. At the end of that day, however, we entered semi-civilization and pitched our tents at a small park near a town called Marsabit in the Northern Region.
Day four was another day of driving, yet this day was totally different, for the majority of the day was spent driving through the Chalbi desert. One of the most remarkable aspects of the whole trip was the fact that we traversed lush forests, green mountainous regions, and low, bone-dry deserts in the same day. Stopping off in the desert was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The air was so hot that when I stepped off the bus I literally felt like my contacts were melting, There was absolutely no humidity in the air and the wind was so intense that if you stood 10 feet ahead of someone, the noise of the wind was so overpowering that the person behind you could scream and you would not hear anything. This phenomenon paired with the fact that there was absolutely nothing in site—no humans, animals, plants, hills—nothing was truly mind blowing. That night we stayed in a village in the desert and got to play with all the children. We also visited the village’s church, which was extremely old and had ancient Ethiopian paintings on the wall. We also got to witness a true desert sunset that night, which was remarkably beautiful. What was so amazing about it was the fact that once the sun started setting, it took nearly 30 seconds to completely set. Although I would love to claim that my roommate and I were amazing campers, that would be a lie because that night we apparently didn’t set up our tents correctly and the wind was so strong that when we woke up the tent had collapsed and was on top of us.