Kenya Recap: Jan 2022
I’ll do my best to describe how Kenya moved me….
Most of you know me as an underwater and ocean dude who grew up in Southern California.
I love anything and everything that has to do with oceans. I have centered my life around the deep blue because I’ve been in love with that environment and its otherworldly feel for as long as I can remember. But then, a few years ago, I went to Kenya for the first time. My experience was moving to say the least. And if you read my last email, you know that I recently returned from my second Kenyan experience, which touched me more than my first. It was so breathtaking that I feel compelled to compare it to my enduring love affair with the marine world. When I jumped in for my first scuba dive my feelings and life changed forever. The sea lion, the infinite blue, the sounds of the regulator breathing and Rice Krispies, the weightlessness, and going deeper into that first dive to encounter life on a scale unmatched by most places on land.The only thing that's come close to captivating me in this way is Kenya.
Kenya is a full immersion experience.
Kenya is also an enveloping experience that's filled with life and sounds and otherworldly experiences reminiscent of what the ocean first offered me all those years ago. And like that first dive, I can't point to just one thing. It’s the dust, the smells, the sounds of the lions roaring through the night. It's bats flying through the common areas and the hippo that decided to eat grass and bushes right outside my tent at night. It's an elephant foraging by stomping on the ground to reveal plant roots and kicking up clouds of dust that create a beautiful atmosphere that glows a warm yellow light in the late afternoon. It’s even lying on the ground in zebra and antelope shit to get a low-angle image of an elephant. It all creates an experience I can only describe as Kenya.
I loved seeing all the animals that I’d only known from zoos, TV documentaries, books and magazines come to life and surround me so concepts like ecosystems, webs of life, thriving habitats, and the natural order of things could actually be experienced.
I don’t know if my love for Kenya will become my next obsession like the oceans, but for now I feel like I want anything-and/everything from there, so I’m already planning my next two trips.
I hope my images capture a small fraction of what I'm describing. To see some of my photographs from the Maasai Mara and Amboseli, click on the links below to visit a couple new galleries on my website. I hope you like them.
Have you ever been to Kenya, or anywhere in Africa? Is it on your bucket list? If not, where have you been that's moved you more than any other place? Do let me know, and if there’s any way I can help you get there, please let me know that too. Whether you end up traveling with me or go on your own, it’s worth your time and money—and I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Stay playful and stay outside,
Jason Bradley