The plan for the day was visiting Nairobi national park, tickets purchased via the ecitizen portal, the elephant orphanage within the park (I had to make this advanced booking more than a month earlier) and the giraffe park. The sheldrick elephant orphanage requires a confirmation that you have been confirmed to enter. You get to pet baby elephants that were orphaned through any number of man made causes – civil strifes, poaching etc. the giraffe park is where you feed giraffes and this is located outside the park.

Started our day at 7 am. Took roughly 30 mins to get to Nairobi national park. The first few animals you see on your safari is always so exciting. We started with some birds, then a turkey and very early on saw some black rhinos, this is rare. As we drove along, we spotted imphala, gazelle, giraffes, zebra and some wildebeest. We then spotted a lioness, our driver drew a hyena out using some audio. For a minute we thought it was going to run towards us. The highlight was a white rhino mommy and her baby. The baby rhino was so playful, jumping around ❤️ we also spotted warthogs, hippos and a summer cat (?). We almost thought it was a cheetah.

Very productive game drive and it was still 10:30 am. We had our time slot at the sheldrick elephant orphanage so headed over. For advanced bookings and getting a confirmed slot, I thought we would be sharing the slot with a few people to visit the elephants. There were over a 100 people at least! Silly me, thinking I’ll get some good 1-on-1 time 😂

We first met Raha, a baby rhino who had a pretty traumatic start to her life. Mom killed and she was badly injured by hyenas. She was rescued and nursed back to health. We then met herds of baby elephants, omg they are so cute. They come running and attach themselves to a giant bottle of milk, not very different from human babies 😍 there was a narrator who talked about what happened to each of them and how they are raised to be strong enough to live in the wild and join a herd. It’s a wonderful initiative!

After this we were off from Nairobi national park and headed to the giraffe park. I had a major laughing bout that Rithvi did not appreciate. As someone who grew up in India, I don’t get ruffled by bumpy roads. My very American daughter is a different story. To avoid a traffic jam, our driver decided to drive off road to overtake so we were basically driving at an angle. Rithvi was so stressed out that the van would fall and while I was reassuring her, another overtook us at high speed! I mean we were already sideways and this other one overtakes us from the left! I was shocked and doubled over in laughter and Rithvi thought I was laughing at her, poor kiddo! The rest of the trip she continued to get scared with all the bumpy game drives and was looking forward to the freeways in US.

The giraffe park was pretty small. We were tired and weren’t in much of a mode to read. We headed straight to feed the giraffes, did a bit of shopping at the gift store and were off. The whole thing may have been 30 mins.

We were done for the day, we had helped ourselves to the picnic sandwiches that were packed the previous day. I can’t remember but I probably ordered in lunch once we got back to our apartment. Mom and I wanted to visit the Masai market again and took an Uber to the mall it was going to be at on that day. unfortunately when we got there, that days Masai market had been canceled and replaced with a luxury apartment expo. Mom and I walked around the mall. I loved the store Kitu Kali, very trendy outfits and shoes, see insta handle @kitukali. Also maakat, denim jacket designs were super cool!

We were originally supposed to go over for dinner at Vatsan uncles house but since he was recovering from mild pneumonia, we postponed it. Had plenty food leftover from lunch and previous day. Mom and Arun uncle got some vegetarian food from the restaurant downstairs. We had an early start the next day at 6:00 am. All of us tried to hit the bed early. My jet lag was still on and I wasn’t getting the best sleep yet.