The Happy Valley

Ever heard of it?

It is funny how it takes an ‘outsider’ to give value to what you have always taken for granted.

Nyandarua ranges, as i prefer to refer to the Aberdare Mountain ranges, are a truly magnificent form of creation; a sight for sore eyes! Hikers will tell you that Elephant Hill, at the ‘starting point’ is a challenge that makes them respect the climb to the top of the sleeping elephant. As the tale goes, each individual comes away having touched the ‘ear’, or the ‘trunk’, the ‘leg’ and so on. I suspect the experience is defined by one’s life-view? Nonetheless, it is not to be attempted by the faint of heart!

For those on the ground level, proceeding in a North-Westerly direction soon brings to view the silhuoette of a huge protrusion thrusting into the sky, with a solidity of purpose that is mesmerizing. Closer observation reveals that it is not quite part of the overlapping waves of the ‘hills upon hills’ that make up the Nyandarua/Aberdare mountain ranges.

From the highest inhabited centre- Mawingu-the road soon dives into the indigenuos trees forests canopies in its meandering around the Kipipiri Mountain, to the Kipipiri Sub-County headquarters, at Miharati. It is at Miharati that the downhill drive to Ol’Kalou, the County Headquarters, begins.

But is this a geography lesson? I hear you protest! an emphatic NO.

From the upstairs rooms of Davida Getaway, a few minutes from Miharati, the Happy Valley opens up to receive one’s amazed gaze at nature’s awesomeness. It is as though the creator, having decided that ‘it was not good’ for the ‘extension’ that was to become Mt. Kipipiri to ‘distort’ the continuity of the Nyandarua/Aberdare ranges, he took out his knife and carefully carved out the valley, to give the two mountains distinctive identities! it is a beautiful sight to behold, with the thick forests on both mountain sides rising as if to the sky.

It is the mornings however that are magical, as the sun rises in its majestic colours, over the Nyandarua mountain ranges. An early cuppa – standard fare at Davida Getaway- will lift you to a great day’s experience of rural serenity in Nyandarua County.

And yet it took foreigners, our colonisers no less, to appreciate this hidden paradise in the remotest part of the central area of Kenya. And boy! did they optimize on it. The hidden location; the perfect weather; the abundance of space..

The Happy Valley was an ideal environment for what came to be referred to as White Mischief.