NameRichard
Area CoveredKenya
InterestsConservation, Safari, Travel writing

Introducing Richard - your Friend at the other End!

About Me

My name is Richard Trillo. I'm a travel writer and journalist, author of the Rough Guide to Kenya and former director of communications at Rough Guides. I went freelance in 2006 to do more writing and editorial project management work. I have an MA in African Studies from London University (East African Ethnography, African Lingustics, Swahili Language & Literature) and a BSc Hons in Sociology from Kingston University.

As well as the Rough Guide to Kenya (9th edition published in 2010) I'm also the author or co-author of Rough Guides to First Time Africa (second edition published April 2011), West Africa (five editions), World Music and The Gambia. After lengthy student and travel years, I joined STA Travel in London to set up their Africa Desk, and then managed the Euston Road office. After further African travels, I moved to Rough Guides in 1989.

I first went travelling in 1975, and have travelled all over Africa, most parts of Europe, the USA, and many other countries, including Guatemala, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Israel and Palestine. I have travelled on the thinnest of shoestrings -  cycling to every corner of Kenya, twice hitchhiking across the Sahara and back, twice cycling through West Africa - and stayed in Kenya's most luxurious camps and lodges ($1000 a night places that were quite hard to leave the next morning).

I live in southwest London with my wife and nearly grown-up children and travel as often as possible, though I'm also deeply concerned about climate change, so we always try to go by train if possible (unfortunately not to Kenya. . .).

I know Kenya extremely well, having travelled the length and breadth of the country many times. Last year I spent three months in Kenya, stayed in 70 different locations and travelled more than 10,000km. I have just been back again to visit the Samburu area and the coast. Samburu was badly hit by a flash flood in March 2010, but I'm glad to report that most of the reserve's safari camps have reopened.

I have many contacts in Kenya and regularly help friends and family with travel arrangements (I've just organised a 50th birthday safari for two relatives and their friends). And I can always organise meet and greet arrangements, and transfers, even at short notice. I'll look forward to helping you get the very most out of your trip.

My Reviews

Great recommendations on Nairobi accommodation!

When I got in contact with Richard, he was really keen and enthusiastic and gave a great recommendation for accommodation in Nairobi. It would've been a lot more difficult without him! If I'd been more organised, it would have been useful to ta read more ...

Rough Guides Rough Guides Introduction to Kenya

Stretched across the equator, with the peaks of Mount Kenya - the second highest mountain in Africa - rising out of a natural environment of exceptional beauty, Kenya is a hugely rewarding place to travel. The country's dramatically diverse geography has resulted in a great range of natural habitats, harbouring a stunning variety of mammals and birds, while its history of migration and conquest has brought about a complex social panorama, which includes the Swahili city-states of the coast and the nomadic pastoralists of the Rift Valley. The world-famous national parks, unselfconsciously colourful peoples and superb beaches lend the country a genuinely exotic image with magnetic appeal.

But treating Kenya as a succession of tourist sights isn't the most stimulating way of experiencing the country. Travelling with your eyes open, you can enter the very different world inhabited by most Kenyans: a ceaselessly active landscape of farm and field, of streams and bush paths, of wooden and corrugated-iron shacks, tea shops and lodging houses, of crammed buses and pick-up vans, of overloaded bicycles, and of streets wandered by goats, chickens and toddlers. Off the more heavily trodden tourist routes, you'll find real warmth, openness and curiosity towards visitors. And out in the wilds, there is an abundance of superb scenery - vistas of rolling savanna dotted with Maasai and their herds, high Kikuyu moorlands, dense forests bursting with bird song and insect noise, and stony, shimmering desert - all of which comes crisply into focus when experienced in the context of an economically beleaguered African nation riven by deep social tensions.

Read more on Rough Guides or Buy the book

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