• Savage Wilderness offers this undersold thrill near Sagana on the banks of Tana river
• The river tosses you like a tennis ball, the ultimate sensation for adrenaline junkies
Everyone has heard of Africa’s legendary white water rafting venues: on the Nile in Jinja, Uganda and on the Zambezi between Zimbabwe and Zambia. But I had never really heard anyone talk about rafting in Kenya. Well, I can only wonder why we don’t market it more because quite frankly, it’s fantastic!
Savage Wilderness was founded by Mark Savage in 1990 near Sagana on the banks of the Tana river. The camp is divided by the deceptively mellow brown waters, and crossing from one side to the other necessitates crossing the elevated rope bridge, which in itself is somewhere where it’s quite fun to linger and watch the waters flowing beneath or possibly witness the serious adrenaline junkie hurl themselves from the 60m bungee jump.
There are a variety of accommodation options, ranging from bringing your own tent to renting one of the banda rooms. There is basic catering available but alternatively, the sheltered areas make it easy to bring your own supplies and self-cater.
This is about white water rafting, though. About getting onto a big, inflatable boat and launching onto the river and sampling what it has in store for you. The upstream rain dictates its mood. On the first morning, it was tempestuous. The water was flowing fast, rising from a depth of 1.6m when we started to 1.8m by the time we finished. From the start, it had attitude. Like a petulant teenager, the river wanted to show us it wasn’t going to do what it was told and sure enough, after managing to stay afloat over several exhilarating dips and troughs, it wreaked its revenge and ejected us into the frothing water like a bodybuilder tossing a tennis ball.
The well-honed and practised procedures quickly kicked in. Everyone was promptly scooped up and returned to their vessel, and we all managed to reman aboard for the rest of the voyage, disembarking at the camp to spend the next few hours swopping tales and recollections of our three-hour voyage over a well-deserved beer or two, having already decided we wanted to do it all again the next day.
The next morning, the river had come up a fair bit, the guides decided we would start further upstream and would probably miss out the final stretch as the sheer speed of the water necessitated a judgement call. It was evident, pushing out into the water, that the river was no longer a petulant teenager but a fully grown angry bull being taunted by a red rag. The waves made it exhilarating, riding one breaker to the next, showering us with spray and devoid of the previous days’ sunshine, making it a fair bit chillier.
What a thrill, though. With the skilled hand of the instructor at the helm and the reassurance of the safety kayaker, we managed to keep ourselves aboard throughout, paddling like people possessed when instructed and holding on like an orangutan when the undulations made our bodies think we must surely be due for a swim. The dark waters gave no indication what might be underneath. “It’s like riding chocolate,” my daughter observed.
It’s high time Kenya’s own white-water rafting was on the same page as its more well-known neighbours. It’s amazing, exhilarating and intoxicating, a million times better than any rollercoaster and the complete induction to the sheer power and strength of Mother Nature.
I should also mention the climbing wall, archery, kayaks and team-building exercises all offered by Savage Wilderness, all a two and a half hour trip from Nairobi. I am debating now how to berate myself for having left it so very long to go to this hidden gem by the water.