Along the Kenyan coast, behind the resort hotels and the palm-lined beaches, there are scraps of forest that matter more to local people than almost any building. These are the kaya, the sacred forests of the Mijikenda, a group of nine related peoples including the Giriama and Digo, who say their ancestors settled in fortified villages hidden in the woods. Each kaya was a clearing in the trees, with a ring of defence and a set of elders who held the village's laws and ceremonies, and when the villages were abandoned, the forests were kept as places of prayer and burial.
Eleven of these forests were listed by UNESCO in 2008, and they hold some of the last remnants of the coastal forest that once ran all along East Africa, with rare plants, birds and butterflies. The paths are used by elders for ceremonies, and visiting means going with a local guide and permission, taking off hats, dressing modestly and following the rules.
The roads inland from Mombasa are hot, busy and humid. The A109 to Nairobi, a heavy-goods road with lorries, buses and boda-boda motorbikes, passes Mariakani, and on the older roads the surface can be patchy, with potholes and loose gravel. Sunrise is the best time, before traffic builds and the heat rises. Rains come in April to June and again around November, and when they come the red earth tracks turn into slick mud. Keep a good distance from lorries and expect sudden stops.
Mariakani is large enough to have fuel stations, small restaurants and shops, and Mombasa, a little over an hour away, has everything. In Mombasa, Fort Jesus, a Portuguese fortress built at the end of the sixteenth century, is worth seeing, and nearby Rabai has the site of the first Christian mission in East Africa, from the 1840s. Drink bottled water, carry sun protection, and take advice before leaving the main road.