A few months ago we welcomed renowned author SIDDHARTH DHANVANT SHANGHVI, for a weeks stay with us. It was an absolute pleasure hosting him and showing him around! Little did we know, that a few months later he would write one of the most beautiful stories about his time in Nairobi, and staying at Ololo. Enjoy the read!
“Trailing Karen,
A trip to Kenya reminded me every step of the way that nature and art are inextricably connected—and that beauty is a form of resilience, much like Karen Blixen, the Danish author who made the country her home
By SIDDHARTH DHANVANT SHANGHVI
THE CHAIR AT KAREN BLIXEN’S WRITING DESK, THE DANISH WRITER
who brought colonial Kenya to life in her classic memoir Out of Africa, bears a criss- cross pattern on its back. The house she once lived in, now a museum at the foot of the Ngong Hills, shares the same stoic simplicity.
A modest wrap-around veranda offered views of a vast, clear sky. I sat under a great tree on the grounds; here the birdsong was sweet and unhurried, holding the frantic, repetitive rhythms of the world at bay. I imagined Blixen—played by Meryl Streep in the memoir’s film adaptation—walking these acres, her dog Dusk trail- ing behind (he was, she writes, taken by a leopard). The grandeur here in Nairobi is landscape, golden and sprawling, a wellspring to her stories. Blixen’s life was a study in contradictions: an aristocrat who found belonging among Kikuyu farm- hands, a chronicler of African light who cast shadows of her own, a pantherina of instinct who gave her life to literature.
Yet as I stood on her veranda, I wasn’t thinking of literary triumphs, not even of Hemingway, that much-laureled lion, who believed she deserved the Nobel Prize. I thought of her loss. Denys Finch-Hatton, her lover, perished in a plane crash; it was in the same plane in which he had once flown her over lakes teeming with flamingos. I imagined her receiving the news on this porch, the Ngong Hills her sole, sheltering witness. What language did grief take in her mouth that day?
Karen Blixen’s erstwhile residence, now a museum, in Nairobi, Kenya, which the Out of Africa author lived in from 1917 to 1931
Suddenly, I understood the stern austerity of her house. It was more like an ashram than a home, a simple, stern place where the pieces of oneself might be reassembled. The air of Africa, she writes in her book, came in at the window, carrying with it a loss that was still not bitter, for the land was too beautiful to hold bitterness.
WHEN I FIRST READ OUT OF AFRICA, BLIXEN PLANTED IN MY consciousness the idea that beauty was a form of resilience—and that suffer- ing could be a passage to art. Her life was evidence of Cohen’s song, that the crack allowed the light in; her fate became a kintsugi of adventure and grief, lacquered with laughter. I read everything she wrote—her short stories, her essays, even her collected letters. A key lesson for me was that nature and art were inextricably connected. As I grew older, I found myself unable to enjoy the literature of city writers, and the art I encountered in galleries felt bloodless in comparison; the wildness had somehow gone out of it.
She remained unafraid of solitude, and her conviction in the singular life gave me courage to spend more and more time in Matheran, a small pedestri- an-only hill station where I spent months in the jungle during the pandemic. On some evenings, I thought I might go mad; on others, I wept quietly. Thanks to Blixen, I rallied through, and my awareness of life became a rarefied thing.
Of course, I understand that while it is a beloved book for many, Out of Africa’s perspective is now considered problematic— for romanticising a faded colonial world: the pastoral native, the noble savage. Yet to stand here, where acacias hum with bees and the sky darkens to a bruised blue, is to sense that her life was larger than the flaws in her work.
Driving up to the house, I passed Karen, the neighbourhood named after her. Here were great manicured estates, hibiscus hedges gua- rding family secrets. No one, I recalled on my flight to Nairobi, had been reading. I was gripped by a strange, crippling fear that books were becoming obsolete. An influencer now outranks a writer, if not in merit then in popularity; if not for what they create, then for what they curate.
But—I reminded myself—Blixen never wrote for influence. She wrote for experience: to feel her losses in order to set them aside. In her world, presence triumphed over performance, yielding not only a body of books, but a legacy.
In India, passporting wealth is a full-time job for some of our oli- garchs. The billionaire billboards his own weddings, replacing flash with feeling. But while oligarchs come and go, few will ever be re- membered for one thing: how they had lived. I could not remember a neighbourhood named after a billionaire—and certainly not for their high qualities.
ON WE DROVE, PASSING PACKS OF BABOONS IN NAIROBI
National Park, arriving back at Ololo Safari Lodge and Farm where I was staying for my week in Africa. My friend George Chapman and his family own this charming, understated resort that somehow at- tracts both movie stars and princes from Dubai. That evening, we found ourselves on the first floor of one of the private lodges, sipping cold Tusker beers and recounting to his parents a brutal rhino fight we’d witnessed earlier—it had been so violent that the local rangers were forced to intervene (young male rhinos, after all, can battle to the death). Just as we were enjoying a cold gulp of the local brew, a series of guttural roars shattered the calm. “Quick, we have to see if it’s the old lion,” George said urgently. Without hesitation, we set our drinks aside and loped across a delicate suspension bridge. Be- neath a blazing orange sky, we climbed into a jeep with Fred, the Masai guide from Ololo—the lodge founded by George’s magnetic parents, Craig and Joanna—and set off in the direction of the roar. The mood had shifted. Anticipation prickled in the air.
During my time here, I had had fine sightings from Ololo—at breakfast, giraffes gracefully bobbed in the distance; at twilight, splashing from the creek, the resident hippo. The lodgings are mas- terful—a testament to the senior Chapmans’ bold, elegant design aesthetic—and from my own tent, I enjoyed expansive views of the bush. George helped run the farm at Ololo; his knowledge is deep and invested. He works with local farmers to learn and promote sustainable practices.
THANKS TO GEORGE, I HAD SEEN A CHEETAH, A RARE
sighting, a female framed against the urban sprawl of Nairobi. A cheetah’s face has distinctive black “tear marks” running from eyes to mouth, thought to reduce glare and aid in focusing on prey. We were close enough to see the tear marks, but not so close as to disturb her as she majestically surveyed her hunting acres. Near a watering hole, we encountered a giant crocodile—he was lying in our path, unafraid, sunning himself, a creature out of mythology.
We retreated and called up to the waterhole. Hippos are one of the largest killers in Africa. In the water, they skulk around almost invisible; then, a basso grunt, a primitive sound, as old as the land. Their hide was once used as a shield in a lion hunt—even the big cat’s canines found it tough to negotiate this skin. A great spout of water shot out, almost as if it were a call to defiance.
While all these animals had flooded me with awe and joy—the lion had elud- ed me. Until my final evening, that is.
‘There he is,’ Fred said, pointing to the lion. A former Masai warrior, Fred had regaled me with stories of his own encounters with lions. Traditionally, Masai warriors killed lions as a rite of passage, a practice called Ala-mayo, although conservation efforts have largely ended this. At the time when Ala-mayo was prevalent, Fred had seen lions up close; they were absurdly quick—like flailing whips lashed by an angry God—and when the Masai warriors, the Morans, cir- cled them, the cats lunged after the bravest, as if to telegram their wild valour— and their secret gift for figuring out the boldest in the battle.
I imagined that Fred did not miss this life-threatening rite; it might have, in his younger years, shown him a new kind of bravery—to protect instead of kill- ing, learning to live with the same lions that he had once feared growing up IN THE JEEP’S DIM LIGHT, GEORGE, FRED AND I FELT connected by something like reverence for the lion but also deep sympathy—the cat was old, perhaps afflicted. He inspired my ten- derness. Now my mind flew to Blixen, to her encounters with lions in the bush, to the roar that awed and alarmed in equal measure. This quality in her writing—awe and alarm—had led me to Afri- ca, to this moment in Nairobi, before an old lion in violet light. The prose had been a portal, the story an invitation to raise the spirit. The orange sky was replaced with a dark, contented night, the stars beyond count.”
