The Rabai Kayas and The Historic Town and Archaeological Site

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. The Rabai Kayas

   Behind Mombasa, a short ride inland, the coastal plain lifts into the red Rabai hills, and in the forest on their slopes sit the kayas. These are the sacred forest groves of the Mijikenda people, nine related peoples who say their ancestors came from a legendary homeland called Shungwaya. Each kaya was a fortified village in the forest, with a council of elders, and the groves are still looked after for ritual and burial. Several kayas are protected as a World Heritage site, and the Rabai group is one of the best known.

   Read the complete The Rabai Kayas write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The Rabai Kayas is where the day begins. Next is Kaya Kauma.

2. 2. Kaya Kauma

   The kayas are patches of forest scattered along the coast of Kenya, each one once the fortified village of a Mijikenda community, hidden deep in the trees for protection. The Mijikenda, nine related peoples of the coastal hinterland, later moved out of the forests, but the kayas remained sacred places, where elders held ceremonies, buried their leaders and made decisions, and where cutting trees or harming the forest was forbidden. That protection has preserved precious remnants of coastal forest, rich in rare plants and animals. In 2008, a group of them, including Kaya Kauma near Kilifi, was listed by UNESCO as the Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests.

   Read the complete Kaya Kauma write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Kaya Kauma comes up about 43 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Historic Town and Archaeological Site.

3. 3. The Historic Town and Archaeological Site

   Gedi does not announce itself. You drive along the Kenyan coast through palms, cashew trees and roadside stalls selling mangoes, turn in under the shade of the Arabuko-Sokoke forest, and suddenly there are coral-stone walls in the trees, a mosque with an arched doorway, a palace courtyard, houses with wells and sleeping niches, all roofed with branches and leaves instead of stone. This was a Swahili town, founded around the twelfth century and flourishing in the fifteenth, when it traded with the Indian Ocean world, with Chinese porcelain and Venetian glass turning up in the digging. By the early seventeenth century the people had gone. Nobody knows exactly why, and the theories, a shift of the coast, raids, or the failure of the water, have never been settled.

   Read the complete The Historic Town and Archaeological Site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 105 km into the recorded legs you reach The Historic Town and Archaeological Site. Next is back through Kaya Kauma.

4. 4. back through Kaya Kauma

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Kaya Kauma write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Kaya Kauma, late in the day. Next is The Rabai Kayas.

5. 5. The Rabai Kayas

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete The Rabai Kayas write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at The Rabai Kayas. That is the ride.