History, Serenity, AND LUXURY

Nairobi’s iconic Fairmont The Norfolk hotel is the perfect base before heading off on an African adventure, with its rich colonial history and a few secrets and scandals

- Nivedita Jayaram Pawar

While visiting any destination, soaking up its history is something that most travellers look forward to. And, sometimes, you don’t even have to leave your hotel to do it.

As I walked into Fairmont The Norfolk in Nairobi, a sense of awe gripped me. The only hotel in Nairobi with hot and cold water in those days, was where early colonisers came to wash off their red dust-covered limbs. Wealthy Europeans and young Englishmen would seek the hotel for fortunes. It was a civilisation in the bush.

Since opening its doors for guests on Christmas Day of 1904, many luminaries, including Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt, have taken refuge in its cool resting rooms. The military and civilians even used it as a meeting place during the First World War.

In the subsequent years, the property went through a lot, including a bombing that destroyed almost a quarter of the hotel. But when it wasn’t battling revolutionaries and thwarting terrorist attacks, Fairmont The Norfolk was where big game hunters like Ernest Hemingway and Mick Jagger plotted their hunting safaris. And I did the same, but armed only with my DSLR and notepad.