Oui5: The Hills are alive (with the sound of my dry heaving)

Don Quixote's worst nightmare!

I do love a good hill walk.

Luckily, the south west end of Robi is studded with the Ngong Hills (say it two or three times, you know you want to), a series of peaks (approx. 2500 feet) along the edge of the Rift Valley. It is about a 45 minute drive from where we are resting our heads (pour ne pas dire 'house'), but we were in a landscape a million miles from the city. Ngong is the Masaai word for 'knuckle', and the range has four knuckles or hills (of which the third is the steepest). Walking beyond the first is considered a security risk, so rangy, bored looking men in various rent-a-cop outfits materialize from the mist at the top of the first peak - to escort you (for a modest fee). Ours had a lovely smile and an evil looking truncheon!

We reached at about 830am, having driven our loaner Corolla over a rutted road which was still slick and red from the morning rains. We were literally in the cloud cover, and the entire scene had a dream-like quality. At one point, I thought we were in a high-school production of the opening scene of Macbeth.

Except that there were giant wind-mills standing hundreds of meters above us, their 10 meter long blades cutting lazily through the clouds and the mist, and then, just as suddenly, vanishing altogether into the haze. It was difficult to judge distance, and we began to think it might be a short walk after all (no rain gear, one jogging stroller, and three kids under age 5). But as we disembarked from our cars into the thin air, the clouds has already begun to thin.

I haven't run much since the NY marathon a few years ago due to the existential angst I found long runs generated in the city - Manhattan Bridge, Chinatown, Financial District, Brooklyn Bridge, skipping the ipod, watching the late night partiers finishing breakfasts and saying boozy goodbyes, nodding to the hard core Wall Streeters on their way to the office on a Sunday morning - there was just too much to think about at any given moment. Running in the Ngong was instantly transcendent ( I use that term advisedly) - and I am really not given to lapsing too lyrical. On your right, the Rift Valley, up ahead the emerald hills and the battered red earth, and above and about you the wispy clouds. No need to play music you'd never admit to owning (although 50 cent is surprisingly fun to run to) - you are a mere piston, evolved over hundreds of thousands of generations to run these very hills.

At the top of Knuckle 3, I'm pretty sure an eagle was hitting on me. It was hanging as though pinned to the sky, absolutely motionless, surfing on a wind channel. Given that we were at the same height (he hundreds of meters of void about the valley floor, and I on the peak of the highest knuckle), our eye contact was inevitable and intense. Our moment could have led to something great (cue Lionel Ritchie's greatest hits) had I not then had to retch from the effort of making it up the hill. When I looked up to wipe my chin of vomitus, the eagle was gone...