Mount Kenya Safari Club: Having stayed there myself, it is truly a time capsule; a Tardis to an era of bygone luxury and romantic decadence. Nothing can prepare you for the magic and memories that you will experience when you visit Mount Kenya’s Camelot. From its front gate to its sprawling 100 acres the Safari Lodge Club is an expedition in itself.
The Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club isn’t just a glamorous old-school Hollywood hangout, it’s got a huge heart too. In 1967, once-owner William Holden and some friends set up a conservation reserve and animal orphanage on the property, embarking on an ambitious breeding program to save the critically-endangered mountain bongo. Today, where these large white-striped antelope were once even more sought after among trophy hunters than the Big Five, there are now 64 safe and sound in the reserve. You can meet, feed and even pet some of them amongst a multitude of other exotic creatures being cared for at the orphanage. Think African lynx, porcupine, forest cats, cheetahs, and a couple of llamas over from Peru – not quite an authentic safari but certainly a meaningful Fairmont-funded cause.
Here you can spend your mornings horseback riding across the hills and through the ancient woodlands of Mount Kenya National Park, spotting white zebras en route. You can spend your afternoons fishing for trout in the lake alongside pre-historic looking marabou stork and peacocks. Dog-lovers can even explore the Club’s vast grounds which house an actual maze, some tennis courts and a spa currently undergoing a big facelift, accompanied by two young Labradors – an unusual hotel amenity by anyone’s standards.
If you wander into the bar at the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club these days, you’ll not see Ernest Hemingway telling tall tales from a day’s big-game hunting. Neither will you see Ava Gardner downing gimlets in an attempt to forget her failed marriage to Frank Sinatra; nor will you have to fight pet leopards for a seat. The whole place just drips with memorabilia.
But in the club’s heyday in the 1960s all these things were commonplace, when Hollywood heartthrob William Holden (Bridge Over The River Kwai, Network) and his partners, oil billionaire Ray Ryan and Swiss financier Carl Hirschmann, ran the place as the most elite private members’ club in the world. Membership was by invitation only and members included Bing Crosby, David Lean, Charlie Chaplin, Steve McQueen, Conrad Hilton, Winston Churchill, and the Maharaja of Jaipur. Stefanie Powers and John Hurt still keep houses adjoining the club.
Holden, who fell in love with Kenya on hunting safaris in the ’50s (he died in LA in 1981), was known for his practical joking in the bar, such as snakes hidden in the bottom of a peanut tin. He was also a very hands-on manager, keeping an eye on the bar and its goings-on via telescope from his private villa.
But there is more to this idyll in northern Kenya, once the private home of jet-set couple the Prudhommes, than just the Hollywood magic dust left behind by years of raucous carousing. It is the sheer beauty of this stretch of land that sits at the base of Africa’s second-highest mountain.
“Bill Holden said, when he saw the place: ‘This is the most beautiful place in the world’,” recalls expatriate American Don Hunt, Holden’s close friend and chairman of the Mount Kenya Game Ranch, a conservation project set up next door to the club. “I agree and I think that every time I drive into my front gate.”
The club’s beauty includes sweeping highland forest that leads into dense thickets of bamboo, while rich clusters of birdlife and herds of waterbuck roam nearby.
The new owners have transformed the one-time Hollywood haunt since it took over the property four years ago. The 200-kilometre journey from Nairobi is nowhere near as challenging as it used to be when Ray Ryan built an airstrip so A-list guests could avoid the trek. However it’s still a long haul, past makeshift shops, roadside towns, and hectares of the country’s famed coffee plantations.
There is still little to give away the beauty that awaits when we turn right past an electricity substation on a dust-choked road from the nearest township, Nanyuki, with only a family of warthogs trotting alongside us for company. A few minutes later, however, at the imposing iron gates embroidered with the Mount Kenya Safari Club logo of two elephant heads, we can see what captivated Holden and Hunt.
Manicured lawns sweep down to a pool, past flower-filled ponds and then on to the slopes, where they climb for kilometres to the snow-dusted peak, known locally as Kirinyaga.
The club is built directly on the equator its line cutting straight through the main bar, following the curve of the national park before running straight along the seventh hole of the club’s petite nine-hole golf course.
Having been greeted in the northern hemisphere by the hotel’s general manager, Philippe Cauviere a gregarious Frenchman with “hospitality in his blood” we’re shown to our rooms on the southern side of the equator.
The club’s 120 rooms are imposing and royally decorated, many with gargantuan fireplaces lit each evening to stave off the crisp mountain cold.
Cauviere’s stated aim is “to bring back the passion and the glamour to the club as well as the tradition”. And he is sparing no detail in his quest. “My dream is to bring back the white peacocks that used to roam the grounds,” he says later over coffee. “As well as the zebras and even the cheetahs.”
He also aims to restore the spirit of the club not only as a destination but also as a place that supports its staff. He believes the Kenyan people have a “natural hospitality”. We see this day in, day out; not only at the resort but on our entire trip.
Still, for me, the Mount Kenya Safari Club even has a unique luxe take on wildlife spotting. On our first day at the club, a surprise call from the front desk suggested we take the following morning’s breakfast at the base of the mountain. Three choices of transport were provided: car, foot, and horse. And damn it, if the spirit of the place didn’t get the better of me and we found ourselves bouncing around on the back of amiable horses, striding across the grounds where William Holden used to career around on his motorbike with his two pet gibbons, Rudi, and Margot, clinging to the bike for dear life.
After reaching the airstrip we trotted to our table, a lavish affair set with silverware. There we sat, dwarfed by the mountain, as armed rangers watched over us and club staff Peter and Joyce whipped up a multi-course extravaganza of bircher muesli, smoked salmon, scrambled eggs, and sweet, plump, locally grown pineapples, topped off with a Kenyan coffee.
On the return journey, as we rode past Holden’s villa, I was sure that if he were watching through his telescope now, he would be pleased with how his pet project had turned out.
Mount Kenya Safari Club Contact Details
Mount Kenya Safari Club, Nanyuki, Kenya, phone +254 20 2216940, see fairmont.com/kenyasafariclub.
Norfolk Hotel, Harry Thuku Road, Nairobi; +254 20 2216940; fairmont.com/norfolkhotel.
Mara Safari Club, Masai Mara, Kenya; phone +254 20 2216940; fairmont.com/marasafariclub.
For further information see smarttraveller.gov.au.
