Six days that flashed past … but seemed jammed with enough events and experiences to last for weeks. A first visit to Africa, and to Kenya. A day in Nairobi, one week after the terror attack at Westgate Mall. Then four days in the astonishing Masai Mara Conservancy, we woke to hippos bellowing in the […]

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  People ride around in Land Cruisers, with guides, here in the Masai Mara, sharing the same upland plains with all manner of creatures, great and small, harmless and lethal, and it doesn’t take long to think you’re in a sort of zoo, where the chances of you being harmed are remarkably low — unless […]

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The idea of safari resorts, like this one in the Masai Mara, in Kenya, is Land Cruisers out on the savanna, a half-dozen tourists with cameras, binoculars and bush hats, a guide/driver … and the big animals of Africa. Even if we concede that Kenya’s tourist industry is geared to assure we see as many […]

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Our room — a tent, actually — is located on Hippo Corner. Or at least that is what operators call it, here at the Fairmont Mara Safari Club in the Masai Mara. On the balcony of this particular tent, a person can look down the 50 feet or so to the Mara River, and see […]

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Yes. We are in Kenya’s capital. Site of the terror attacks at the city’s biggest mall last week. I prefer to think it isn’t as brazen as it may seem, from the western side of the Atlantic. Isn’t it generally safest right after a major attack? And wouldn’t it take a few weeks for a […]

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… out of mind? Presumably scores, even hundreds of print and electronic journalists turned up for the Lakers’ media day, today, many of them interested in Kobe Bryant, above all else. But it would appear as if no one asked him about his long trip to the UAE and back. I would just like to […]

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Abu Dhabi? Or Dubai? This is an ongoing debate in the UAE. Which city is preferable/better, and on what levels? To most people who live in Dubai, this is no contest. Theirs is the bustling metropolis with conspicuous consumption and enormous towers. A movable feast. Or a movable party, anyway. However, for many of us […]

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We plan to visit a semi-exotic country semi-soon, so we presented ourselves at the “Disease Prevention and Control” building near the biggest hospital in Abu Dhabi. This is where you go to get the mandatory HIV and tuberculosis tests, when you first arrive in the country. Everyone in the city, then, has been there. And […]

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I have reached a point where I read nearly everything I like twice. Three times, even. Talking about books here. I would rather go back and reexamine something I consumed a year ago, or decades ago, than take a chance on something new. (Unless it comes with overwhelmingly enthusiastic recommendations from people I trust.) I […]

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We went three years in Abu Dhabi without a car. Aside from a one- or two-day rental for work. Then we did about 10 months renting a little car, by the month, from a local agency. Today, we took the plunge into car ownership in the UAE. That (above) is the vehicle we purchased, from […]

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