It's 1am and I am being driven down an utterly dark road, somewhere south of Mombasa. Every now and then a person shows up in the headlights. My driver tells me they are walking home from work. 'But isn't that rather dangerous? Couldn't they get hit by cars?' His reply, somewhat dry, shuts me up: 'Well, as you can see, there is very little traffic. The greater risk is perhaps the lions, or actually the snakes.'
The rest of my holiday will be characterised by such extremes. I am travelling alone to a country which is lushly tropical in parts, ravaged by drought in others; where most of the population lives on almost nothing, but where Westerners come to play on white beaches and in warm seas.
My destination was Shaanti, a holistic health retreat. My package allowed me one treatment (such as Ayurvedic massage or reflexology) a day, plus all my meals and up to five hours of meditation, yoga and breathwork each day. What it didn't allow me was any meat, alcohol or cigarettes. Given that my London life had left me feeling distinctly toxic, this seemed perfect. I had 10 days to tone up, get a tan and detox, and in the middle of it all I would go on safari for three days.
Shaanti did turn out to be perfect. Its eight rooms sit in a garden full of coconut trees, facing a perfect white beach and an open-sided coconut-thatched pavilion housing the yoga platform, jacuzzi and steam room. The swimming pool, surrounded by bougainvillea, is behind it, where I learnt it was wise to tie your bag to your lounger or risk losing it to the black-faced colobus monkeys who also hang out there.
On my first night I slept though all the morning yoga classes, waking in time for my first outdoor vegetarian lunch (by myself) under a treehouse in the gardens, followed by an Ayurvedic massage. Then came a yoga class, followed by the most ridiculously marvellous experience: a star bath. It may never have occurred to you that the most relaxing thing you could ever do would be to have a hot bubble bath in a garden on the edge of a beach, surrounded by lanterns while you watch the stars come out. Then I was served dinner by the pool. I was asleep again by 9.45pm.
The next few days followed the same pattern. Obviously wrung out by being young, single and living in London (oh, the horror), I seemed to want to sleep all the time. Tasreen, a second-generation Kenyan of Ismaili descent and the director of the hotel, told me this wasn't unusual, and neither was my desire not to leave the grounds. 'Sometimes people just want to sleep and sleep, and often they don't want to go and explore. We have a lot of aid workers who come to stay from Congo or Sudan, and they don't want to see more; they want to feel safe here.' I'll stop whingeing about the hardships of living in London now, I think.
The only tricky part of travelling alone is eating alone. Once I had shaken off my lethargy, I decided to try a local restaurant, Ali Barbour's, which is built in a coral cave underground. The food was unremarkable but the setting was amazing. Every single table was occupied by couples; fine, until one nice chap saw me trying to photograph myself and leapt up to offer to take a photo of me. After that I did feel mildly suicidal.
Since everyone else at Shaanti ate alone it felt perfectly normal there, and the food was excellent. Although most of it was Eastern-inspired, the kitchen rustled up an authentic Kenyan meal when I asked: sukuma (a green leaf like kale) mixed with chilli and garlic, beans with maize, mashed potato with spinach, and ugali, a Kenyan staple a bit like polenta. Completely delicious, but possibly not the best thing to eat directly before a yoga class.
Before my safari I squeezed in a day of snorkelling at Wasini Island, part of a protected marine park. To get there we drove almost as far as Tanzania, past whole villages made of baked mud - houses that looked as if they would wash away the second the rains came - full of barefoot children waving at our minibus. Still, they looked a damn sight more cheerful than the lobster-skinned tourists rolling out of their buses, complaining about the state of the roads. The diving was fantastic though; the warm, clear water was abundant with brightly-coloured fish, including some huge lionfish.
I was collected for the safari at 4am and driven by the knowledgeable and patient Yusuf to Tsavo West, half of a million-acre safari park with views of Mount Kilimanjaro. At our first night's accommodation I discovered that I would be sleeping in a tent (albeit a luxury one). I tried to be brave, I really did, but after a day in which we'd seen elephants everywhere as well as crocodiles and more than 50 hippos, I was nervous. This was only magnified when our waitress interrupted dinner to tell us there was a hippo near the dining tent. In fact it was significantly nearer to my tent - so close that it seemed to be scratching its back on it. Since you can't move around the camp alone after dark, I had a couple of rule-breaking gin and tonics and was escorted back by a Masai watchman; when I explained how nervous I was he showed me the whistle in my tent, saying he would come running with his spear the moment I used it.
Next day we travelled to Tsavo East where (hurrah) we were to stay in Voi Safari Lodge, which has its own waterhole and a hide from which you can see marabou, possibly the scariest birds in the world. Back out in the park we got very lucky and saw 11 lions in the afternoon, as well as countless gazelle, eagles, a very distant cheetah, buffalo and three elephants having a sand fight. We also had an exhilarating time pushing our jeep out of a sand bank about half a mile down the road from the aforementioned lions.
Returning to Shaanti was like coming back to a lovely tropical cocoon. The only unpleasantness was the beach-boy culture: a wealthy white woman can be the difference between poverty and success for these boys, who hope to be taken in for a season by tourists in want of a boyfriend. When she leaves Kenya, she'll buy him a car or even a flat. Locals refer to it as Western Union romance. Given the vast disparity in wealth here, I was comforted to learn that Shaanti, owned by Kenyans and staffed by Kenyans, pays more than the minimum wage and treats its employees well - unlike other hotels on Diani beach, which refuse to pay the minimum wage of 3,000 Kenyan shillings (about £27) a month.
On the way back to Mombasa airport, stuck in traffic in the middle of a busy market full of people selling kikoi wraps, dried fish and enormous tomatoes, I couldn't quite believe that in 12 hours I would be back in London. Kenya still felt like a completely different world, but it really isn't as far away as I had thought.
Essentials
Rebecca Seal travelled with Wellbeing Escapes (0845 602 6202; wellbeingescapes.co.uk). A seven-night full-board package at Shaanti, with seven holistic treatments, two yoga classes a day, transfers and return flights to Mombasa, costs from £1,550 per person. A three-night safari can be arranged on arrival or as part of the package (dmtours.net).
