What’s the Best Way to Explore Kenya? Join a Local Hiking Club.

By the time we reached the third waterfall on the Kahunira trail, my wife, Kiki, and I had been walking through the forested backcountry of Kiambu County, Kenya, for nearly three hours. Along the way, we had tasted sweet lady finger bananas in the market town of Githunguri, sipped a sour Kikuyu home brew called muratina proffered by laborers at a rural gravel quarry and made a heart-pounding shortcut across rust-flecked irrigation pipes that traversed a steep gorge fringed with tea plantations.

Our companions were two dozen young Kenyans who’d learned of the excursion through Lets Drift, an outdoor recreation community that creates weekly hikes, bicycle excursions and mountaineering treks in the countryside outside Nairobi.

Upon arriving at the forest-shaded waterfall, some members of our cohort stripped down to swimsuits, performed acrobatic dives off boulders that edged the cascade pool and posed for selfies in the midafternoon sun.

In a part of Africa where the conventional tourism industry was built around a wildlife-focused, British colonial footprint, Lets Drift stands out as an exuberant Kenyan-centered enterprise. Its aim is to celebrate outdoor recreation and, at the same time, generate a sense of community among the country’s growing urban middle class.

One challenge of the Kahunira trail is walking across rust-flecked water pipes to traverse a gorge en route to the waterfalls.Credit…Rolf Potts

Created in 2018 by Alex Kamau and Paul Njuguna, both from greater Nairobi, Lets Drift attracts roughly 8,000 participants each year, many of whom participate in activities like hiking, e-biking, backcountry camping and digital detox retreats. “Our mission is to make adventure more accessible and affordable for Kenyans,” Mr. Kamau said.