Shompole remains a benchmark for barefoot luxury,while bringing a lion population back from the brink,writes Brian Jackman.
WHAT an extraordinary lodge Shompole is. As you fly in by bush plane from Nairobi the first thing you notice are its rooftops,bewigged with thatch,like an African ark that has come to rest halfway up the Nguruman escarpment. From here,it presides over a vast private wildlife fiefdom on the floor of the Great Rift Valley,with superb views deep into neighbouring Tanzania.
Shompole was Kenya's first designer lodge. Created 10 years ago by Anthony Russell,the maverick son of a white Kenyan hunter,this stunning masterpiece is still setting the benchmark for barefoot-chic luxury.
Artist,designer and rock musician,Russell is an engaging and multifaceted character,a conservationist whose passion for lions and Maasai culture has been overshadowed by his success in building exotic safari lodges.
Straight lines and right angles are anathema to him. At Shompole,you live among curving,icing-sugar walls that reflect the rolling Rift Valley contours;in palatial rooms without doors or windows,each with its own plunge pool and water flowing along shallow runnels,as in the Gardens of the Alhambra,creating the perfect counterpoint to the blinding heat of the Rift.
The pillars supporting the high-peaked roofs are simply the bleached and polished trunks of dead sycamore figs and the bare decks are fashioned from the same pale timber. Decoration comes in the form of riverbed pebbles,arranged here and there with Zen-like simplicity,and in the centre of each room stands a king-size bed which,draped at night in a mosquito net,becomes a bug-free zone within a house always open to the wind.
I stayed at Shompole 360,so-called because of the spectacular all-round views from its hilltop position,and spent three idyllic days there,waking each morning to the echo of wood doves and looking into the deep valley below in the hope of seeing a leopard slipping through the euphorbias. All day long the doves called,giving the heat a voice in harmony with Shompole's mood of seductive indolence. In the evenings,the breeze induced a feeling akin to standing in the bows of an old-time clipper ship,as if we were about to sail out into the dark void of the Rift.
The lodge is named after Shompole Mountain - the Mountain of Red Ochre - that rises from the floor of the Rift Valley like a gateway between Kenya and Tanzania. Beyond it lie the soda flats of Lake Natron,home to candyfloss clouds of lesser flamingos,and the smoking cone of Ol Donyo Lengai,the holy mountain of the Maasai.
The Maasai are very much in evidence at Shompole,whose 16,000-hectare concession is part of a ranch owned by the local community that provides them with a handsome income while allowing their pastoral way of life to continue. At the same time,it has encouraged the Maasai to preserve wildlife rather than seeing it as a threat to be disposed of by fair means or foul.