Safari Read online

  Then suddenly, I spot a Texan—it’s just like spotting a bird. “Forget the milkshake!” I call to the waitress, racing out into the lobby, where I extend my hand to him. “I don’t think you’re from around here,” I say. “Texas, perhaps?”

  “How’d you guess?” he says, laughing.

  “I’m Geoffrey Kent, I own a safari outfitter in the area.”

  “Name’s Worthing—Tom Worthing.” He’s more than six feet tall, wearing fine-looking cowboy boots, jeans, a red-and-white checkered shirt, and a Stetson. “And this is my wife, Sara.” His paw is friendly, but it nearly swallows me up when he shakes my hand. “Sara and I actually would like to go on a safari,” he says. “Which company are you with?”

  When I tell him, he slaps his knee. “From what they tell me, you’ve got the best safari in East Africa!”

  “Is that what they say!” I laugh. Good God, is that what they say?

  “Yep, sure is. Would you set up an itinerary for us?”

  “How long?”

  “Say, thirty days. We were just gonna step out ta lunch, can you run me some numbers and meet us afterward?”

  “Certainly, and might I recommend the Thorn Tree next door for your lunch—tell them Geoffrey Kent sent you. I’ll come up to your suite in an hour.”

  {Charlie Grieves-Cook}

  The kind of comfortable, Hemingway-style tent used on a mobile safari—electric lights, mosquito nets, hot and cold running water—a far cry from 1966.

  Thirty days, thirty days. I begin making notes, plotting out the logistics and the costs of fuel to travel. From Nairobi we’ll leave to spend four or five nights in a number of different locations, with occasional stays at guest lodges so my team can set up the mobile camp ahead of us. The itinerary will go from Kenya to Tanzania to Uganda, as such:

  Amboseli, where we’ll camp for a couple of nights beneath Kilimanjaro, then on to Lake Manyara, the only place to see tree-climbing lions. From there we’ll visit Ngorongoro Crater, where I’ve managed to get the first-ever permit to camp at the bottom of the crater, then to the Serengeti for tea with Jane Goodall at her camp—I know her through the Leakey family; she loves to chat with visitors about her work with chimpanzees. Then we’ll stay for a few nights in the Masai Mara, then on to Kisumu, where we’ll catch the ferry across Lake Victoria to Jinja, Uganda, from which point we’ll make our way to Queen Elizabeth Park. From there we will go to the Kibale Forest, where we will spot chimps, and then, for the grand finale of the safari, three nights at Paraa Lodge in Murchison Falls, Uganda. This destination is currently all the rage, as the 1951 Humphrey Bogart film The African Queen was filmed there.

  I calculate the costs of food—lots of steak, Americans love steak—and good liquor, hospitality staff, housekeeping, transport. I keep the numbers low by planning to host the entire thing myself. I’m prepared not to make a profit—the whole point is to show my parents we really can sell this vacation, keep up my morale, and hopefully grow the word about how excellent Abercrombie & Kent’s Off the Beaten Track Safari is.

  It comes to $3,235.00.

  Damn! The price is still too high. Why didn’t I come up with a less luxurious package? I should’ve thought how I could pare down my staff and plan for slightly lower-quality food and beverage—Americans don’t mind a burger every now and then! Just like that, I feel as if I’ve lost the business.

  An hour later, as I knock on Tom and Sara Worthing’s door, my palms and forehead are sweating. I’m not sure even a Texan will be keen on the idea of a safari at this price.

  “Great lunch, Kent, fine recommendation,” says Tom Worthing. He stands over my desk with his thumbs through his belt loops. “So what’ll it be?”

  I’ve rehearsed this pitch for weeks, awaiting the right moment to launch into it. “Thirty days, you’ll have me as a guide all to yourselves, and you’ll see elephants, and rhinos, and leopards and buffalos and lions,” I tell them. “The big five! And the birds, the trees, the mountains, the views; why, just wait until you see our camp on the lake—”

  “Kent. How much?”

  I lay my hands flat on the desk in front of me, as if to brace all three of us. I purse my lips.

  I lose confidence and can’t get the number out.

  Eventually—finally—I announce: “It’s two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-two dollars.”

  Tom Worthing’s face falls. He looks at his wife, and then turns back to me. “He must be kidding.”

  I’ve blown it.

  “Kent,” he says. “Is that all?”

  Suddenly, an inspiration: “Each!”

  Tom Worthing pulls out his checkbook, scribbles out a check, and hands it to me. “We’ll add your tip at the end, if that’s okay,” he says.

  “That will be fine, Tom.”

  “You see that, Sara?” Tom Worthing says. “Only the best for my lady.”

  For the first time I realize how to make a good profit.

  “Get a good night’s rest,” I call as they exit. “We’ll meet here for breakfast and head out.” Then I race to the Muthaiga Club, prepared for what has to come next.

  When I pull in, my father’s car sits close to the entrance. “Well, look who it is!” cries one of his cronies as I enter the bar.

  “The cockiest safari guide the world has ever seen!” calls another.

  “Hey, Geoff, we’re all just sitting here with your father toasting you with a drink we’ve named after your business: an A&K on the Rocks!”

  I ignore him and slip a bill to the bartender to take care of my tab. Then I turn to my father and his friends seated at the bar. “Dad,” I say. “What’s in that new drink? I might serve it at camp.”

  “Why, it’s a delightful mix of gin and bitters.”

  “Bitters?” There’s a ripple of laughter from behind their glasses. “Sounds about right, gentlemen.”

  Sir Charles Markham, the director of the club, follows me as I head outside. “Geoff,” he says. I turn around to face him. “You know that given my friendship with your parents, I hate to have to do this—”

  “I understand, Sir Charles. I only came to pay my tab.”

  “I have to blackball you from the club for six months . . . unless,” he says, “you bring back our staff. Then we could call this whole silly thing off.”

  “That’s all right, Sir Charles. I’m so busy with work it could be a year before I have time to come back.”

  I exit the club and roll out of the gravel lot, back toward the center of Nairobi toward my trucks and my camp and my first luxury mobile tented photographic safari—the first one ever with refrigeration.

  When we’ve secured our place in Africa, I set my sights on other key parts of the world. Fortunately, I have some support.

  In the early 1970s, while I’m playing polo in Chicago, I meet Jorie Butler. Jorie becomes my partner not just in business, but in life, as my wife. She’s the first handicapped female polo player in the United States, and as I’m on my way to making my dream come true—winning the US Open Championship—her tutelage and advice make it possible for me to make a name both in the American polo scene and in business.

  Jorie stands by in 1976 when I play in my first US Open, and in 1978 when the Abercrombie & Kent team is the first to win both the US Open and the US Gold Cup in the same year. It’s our shared passion for the sport that first unites us, and it’s our love of the world that keeps us together for thirty years.

  A natural business mind from a family of entrepreneurs, Jorie sees my vision for the business and knows how to leverage the experience of us both to grow it. She helps me to “go where the fish swim,” helps me open an office in the United States, from where the majority of our clientele now come. Our first office is in a barn on her father’s property in the prosperous Oak Brook suburb of Chicago where she grew up and where her father runs the world-famous Oak Brook Polo Club. Our office is nothing more than one desk, a yellow telephone, three raccoons, and a blackboard (with white chalk for prospective clien
ts, red chalk when they book). We cater to American clients looking to travel outside the United States, and our US presence expands rapidly throughout the seventies.

  In my early thirties, I make my first million dollars. We establish a second American home base in Lake Worth, Florida, next to the brand-new Palm Beach Polo Golf and Country Club in Wellington, where the weather is always good for playing polo and where it’s easy for me to catch a flight on the Concorde from Miami for meetings anywhere around the world.

  Jorie helps me take Abercrombie & Kent from Africa to America and most everywhere beyond—and she inspires me to establish a commitment to generating business while also improving the world.

  {Stevie Mann}

  Enjoying Sundowner drinks around the campfire beside the Mara River. There is nothing like a Sundowner in the African bush after a long day.

  Ultimately, to employ a metaphor that works for both polo and travel—we have a wild ride. For quite some time, I feel as though together, we rule the world.

  {Mohammed Ismail}

  It’s come a long way since the very first Sun Boat. Cleopatra’s Oasis on Sun Boat III provides some of the most beautiful views along the Nile.

  Chapter 6

  Egypt

  1977

  By the late 1960s, our client base has grown, and so have our clients’ cravings for highly exotic vacations. After a Kenyan, Tanzanian, or South African safari, they’ve begun to ask where I might recommend they vacation next.

  For some time, I’ve been fixated on Egypt. Its history is epic, and there is a growing perception in the West that Egypt, with all its mystery and antiquity, could even be glamorous. In the late 1950s, the story of Moses was produced as a major motion picture, The Ten Commandments, and then in 1963 Elizabeth Taylor starred in Cleopatra—one of the biggest-budget films ever produced at that time. Unfortunately, there’s a good reason that very few tourists have ever explored the fabled land of Pyramids and the Sphinx and the magic of the Nile: the Egyptian Minister of Tourism refuses to give an operating license to any non–Egyptian-owned travel company.

  In the 1970s, I manage to operate under the umbrella of an Egyptian-owned company, but I still can’t get my own license. Then, in 1981 while I’m playing polo in Florida, I hear on television the news that Egypt’s President, Anwar Sadat, has been assassinated. Knowing that an eruption of geopolitical tension scares foreigners away and motivates a nation’s government to bring in tourism, I rush to Miami and board the Concorde, which stops in New York and then flies supersonic to London. Within a couple of days, I’m inside the office of the Egyptian Minister of Tourism. “Listen,” I tell him, “your President’s been shot, the whole world is canceling tours in Egypt. I want a license. You need foreign travel companies now.”

  “What will you do for me?” he says.

  “I will not stop promoting Egypt. But in exchange for my faith in your country, I want an operating license.”

  Before I leave for the airport, I have a license in hand, and I vow to offer the best Egyptian vacation that anyone has ever produced and market Egypt as a classic destination.

  In the sunrise, the Pyramids appear bright bloodred, casting shadows of triangular mountains across the open sand.

  The Egyptian Minister of Antiquities accompanies me; both our camels—their legs covered in dust up to their knees—gait slowly over the occasional pile of pebbles, toward the Pyramids and the Sphinx. It’s a moment so grand that I might as well be observing the image of us in a film.

  As we move in, the sight of the Sphinx haunts me like an apparition, with its arms stretched out like a lion in waiting—and truly, what happened to the nose? Did it erode over thousands of years’ worth of windswept desert nights, or could it have been taken in an act of old wartime revenge of some kind? The statue rises up to the sky, and I try to imagine what society must have been like for the people who were living when it was created.

  Very few people get to tour the inside of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, but the Minister of Antiquities has made a special arrangement for me. Inside, our voices echo as we wind our way through a cavernous corridor. I peer up: hundreds and hundreds of stairs. My host’s shoes click up the first of them, and I start up after him.

  I take note of the size of the rocks—huge, perfectly measured and stacked, hewn by who knows how or where. “How did they get all these materials in here?” I ask.

  “They were actually rolled in on logs,” he says. “This job would have taken thousands and thousands of slaves.”

  “How could they fit all these rocks with such precision?”

  “What’s more, Geoff,” he says, “is that all the engineering is so perfect that during the day, when the ancient people would worship, all the sunlight would pour directly over there.” He points to an altar at the front of a long room.

  “Does it still happen today?”

  “Every afternoon.”

  Finally sold on the fact that their country needs tourists, the Egyptians overseeing tourism have organized a top-shelf visit for me. A happy coincidence is that the British actor David Niven happens to be here filming a highly anticipated project, an adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel Death on the Nile. David’s son, Jamie, had taken our first-ever safari by private carriage and steam locomotive in Kenya, which we called the “Iron Snake.” “If you’re in Egypt,” Jamie says to me, “you must meet my father!” He arranges for David and me to have dinner together on the prow of one of the only two riverboats on the Nile, the Isis, managed by the Hilton hotel group.

  David is magnificent over cocktails as he recalls stories from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst—he was known as a fabulous troublemaker there, even when I arrived, two decades after his departure. He’s also generous with insights about his career in film. As the first course is served, he points off in the distance. “We’re making this movie on that ship over there,” he says. “You see it?”

  {Reute Butler}

  The first Sun Boat, inspired by the movie of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.

  I turn and find the silhouette of an old steamship in the glow of the sunset. “The one with the funnel coming out of the top?”

  “That’s the one—beauty, isn’t she? The SS Memnon. In the film she’s called the Karnak.”

  In the film she’s called the Karnak. “David,” I say, an idea suddenly possessing me, “do you think there’s any chance I could go on board?”

  “Don’t see why not,” he says. “When do you think you’d like to go?”

  “How about right now?”

  He gazes over my shoulder at the boat again, and then nods. “We’ll have to get there before the crew leaves,” he says, “or there’ll be no one to let us on board.” We eat our dinner quickly and make our way along the riverbank under the palm trees. The boat is simple and charming, having been constructed in the earliest years of the twentieth century and still so true to the era, with the paddle wheel on its side, clean, curved corners around its front, and one row of portholes to accommodate what must be no more than a couple dozen passengers. We make it no farther than the entry when I know I’m on to something incredible. “David, could you please do me a favor? Get me the name of the owner.”

  The boat’s owner happens to be a very prominent Egyptian. Now better versed in persuading Egyptians to enter into business agreements, I make a few calls and schedule a meeting with him that week. “Here’s this huge hit movie that will be released all over the world,” I tell him. “Anyone will want to do a Nile River cruise on this riverboat instead of those two Hilton boats I’ve seen. I’ll lease the ship from you in time for the film to come out, then I’ll advertise it everywhere: ‘Now you can do the Nile on the original paddle steamer where Death on the Nile was filmed.’” He agrees, and we schedule a phone call to sort out the details for when I return to Florida.

  The cruise is full—instantly. I call Oxford University, aware of an Egyptology expert named Anthony Hutt who could lead talks on hieroglyphics, th
e history of the cities along the Nile, and Islamic architecture specific to Egypt. “I’m building my business all over the world,” I tell him. “I would need to train you to host the trip without me.”

  “When does it start?” Tony says. “I’m in.”

  A renowned investment banker from New York has booked the first journey, for a group of a dozen and a half of his friends. On the day of their scheduled departure, I receive a phone call from the still-enthusiastic Tony Hutt. “All the New Yorkers have touched down in Luxor,” he assures me, “and they’re getting situated on board now.”

  “Excellent.”

  {Pamela Lassers}

  Seeing the Pyramids in person really allows you to appreciate their vast scale. They are made from locally quarried limestone and granite.

  {Pamela Lassers}

  The Sphinx on the Giza Plateau rests on the west bank of the Nile River. It is 240 feet long and carved out of limestone.

  “Excellent, Geoff, it’s dynamite! You should see them. They’re looking around—‘Oh, how wonderful,’ they’re going. ‘Oh, fantastic, why, what a marvelous boat!’ Shortly they’ll be stepping outside to have lunch under the awnings, and then we’ll start the engines and cruise out of Luxor.”

  “Brilliant,” I tell him. “Stay in touch, would you? Let me know how it’s going.” It’s an instruction I’ll regret within hours.

  Around mid-morning, my secretary, Jeannine Nihil, asks me to take an urgent phone call. “Tony Hutt is on the line,” she says. “I think you should take this immediately.”

  “Put him through.”

  “Geoffrey?” Tony says. “There’s a massive problem.”

  “A problem?”

  “I mean it, Geoffrey. We have an absolute disaster on our hands.”