In 2013 Clarissa and I stayed at the Kitani Bandas in Tsavo West National Park. This was a trip down memory lane for me because these bandas have remained unchanged since my first safari here while on school holidays in the 1960s. This was when I lived in nearby Mombasa on the Kenya Coast and my mom would hire a vehicle for weekend safaris. She always booked the No 8 banda at Kitani. What is unusual is that they have not been renovated, replaced or 'improved' since then in any way! They are survivors from an era before the advent of the huge modern-styled lodges that sprouted up everywhere in East Africa in the 1970s. The scenery, which included Kilimanjaro rising up over the bush to the West, looks exactly the same now as I remembered it being back then and the wildlife just as skittish. Past and present Tsavo has always had problems of some kind or another. Rinderpest, poaching, bandits, droughts and so on - but it is so vast that it remains Kenya last true wilderness experience. The only thing I did notice was the complete absence of black rhino along the Tsavo River, which in the 1960s had teemed with these animals to the point that they were a problem when out game viewing, always in the way on the track ahead or some such thing.