Lamu is Kenya's Katmandu, where the visitor is transported back in time to a way of life much as it was 600 years ago. Little has changed, and in visiting Lamu it is easy to see how life must once have been lived at all the great trading posts on the East African coast. The unchanged architecture, consisting of a series of open-plan, connected galleries almost always without doors, featured interior courtyards ensuring shade from the tropical sun and calm from the bustling streets outside, were kept secret behind enormous intricately carved doors.
Age-old commercial and political links with Arabia and Persia provided Lamu's raison d'etre, and it emerged as a vital trade link for spices, silks and perfumes from Zanzibar, and slaves from the interior. It is an intriguing mix of these early influences on the indigenous people, plus the influence of Portuguese explorers and Indian merchants. All these effects merged with the predominantly African blood and resulted in the distinctive details of features and skin color.
To the tourist, Lamu is a labyrinth of minute winding lanes, tall, featureless houses with ornately carved wooden doors, precarious balconies, women dressed in concealing black dresses and yashmaks, men in long flowing robes wearing delicately embroidered white caps, long-eared donkeys wandering aimlessly or sleeping in the narrow streets, goats everywhere, and great Dhows swaying heavy-bellied through the sea.
Lamu is a town, an island and an archipelago. If you visit you should try to visit all three. The archipelago is a chain of seven islands and a multitude of islets, separated from the mainland at its narrowest part by a channel just a few meters wide. The mainland and the inland sides of the islands are fringed by dense mangrove forests, while the seaward sides are offer some of the best beaches in Kenya .
Throughout the archipelago there are numerous historical sites; visible and tangible evidence of ten centuries of a colorful, and often violent, past. Most of these settlements are Arab in origin and started as small trading stations. As these small colonies grew they absorbed much from the local people and a distinct Afro-Arab culture emerged. This culture, which came to be known as Swahili, today dominates not only Lamu but the urban centers of Mombasa and Malindi and its language has become the principal lingua franca of East and Central Africa.
Ancient handicrafts are still carried out as always - woodcarvers chip out rosettes and distinctive motifs on doors, bed-chests and chairs, plasterwork is carved and moulded for decorative arches, ancient patterns are woven and beaten into silver objets d'art, and hand-bellowed forges create intricate ironwork.
Two days spent wandering through the town, from the richer areas to the coconut-matting homes of the fishermen, watching the ancient arts of building ocean-going Dhows for the transport of strong mangrove poles to Saudi Arabia, will give you a new perspective on life.
The town, with its busy yet relaxing atmosphere, is not all that the area has to offer. The district is Kenya in miniature, with its balmy sea, deserted tropical beaches, abundant wildlife and friendly people. Now it is possible to sail the archipelago of Lamu by Dhow in order to visit the Kiunga Marine Park and the Dodori National reserve.
The Lamu area contains some of the worlds last truly deserted tropical beaches and islands, and features traditional crafts, exotic shopping for bargain hunters, and a glimpse of a contented way of life that has remained unchanged for centuries.
The beach on Lamu island is 12 km of empty sands backing on to an ocean unprotected by a reef and therefore more lively and more powerful than you find elsewhere in Kenya. But no one comes to Lamu only for the beach. The town is now well known, a delightful anachronism carrying on its daily life as it has done for centuries so that the visitor has a science fiction experience of being transported back through tine. Settlement dates back to the 14th century and by the 19th Lamu was a flourishing trading community. But labor emigration and a fall in the value of its exports brought, in the early days of this century, an end to its heyday. There are still many manifestations of the elegant, refined life led by the richer folk in past eras. If you can be shown the interiors of some of the grander mansions, from the outside appearing both formidable and similar, you will find enormously intricate plasterwork unknown in the rest of Islam. The architecture is admirably suited to the climate - a series of open plan galleries almost always without doors, and interior courtyards open to the sky which ensure shade and calm against the tropical sun. The town is crowded with houses and people, the streets so narrow that you can shake hands with your neighbour in the house opposite. The main street, Ndia Kuu, is lined on either side with shops and workshops, each no more than a room stretching from the street to the living areas behind. Here you will find carpenters and herbalists, jewelers and grocers, coffee houses and cooks preparing the local equivalent of Turkish Delight called halva - stirred in huge copper cauldrons, and even a factory, using Dickensian machines, which makes local spaghetti, known as tambi, and coconut oil used for cooking by the townsfolk and for sun tanning by visitors.
Hotels in Lamu
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