Three days in Lamu: the Swahili town that never let cars in
Two nights on Lamu Island off the northern Kenyan coast, with the fort and the museum in the old town, a dhow across to the ruins at Takwa, and the long walk down the beach to Shela.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Lamu
- Places
- 5 across 3 days
Lamu town sits on the landward side of an island in an archipelago near the Somali border, and it has been trading with Arabia and India for something like seven hundred years. It grew rich on mangrove poles, ivory and enslaved people, was governed at various points from Pate, Oman and Zanzibar, and then quietly stopped mattering when the trade moved to Mombasa and the steamships arrived. Nothing was knocked down to make way for anything, which is why UNESCO listed the old town in 2001.
The streets are between one and three metres wide, and there is effectively no motor traffic on the island. Everything moves by donkey, by handcart or by boat: building sand, gas cylinders, luggage, patients. The result is a town where you hear conversation, hooves, the call to prayer and the sea, and where the loudest thing on the seafront is somebody arguing about the price of a dhow trip.
Three days is right for a first visit. An afternoon in the old town, a whole day on the water with the ruins at Takwa and a reef to snorkel, and a last morning walking down the sand to Shela, which is the village where everyone with money stays and where the beach starts.
Highlights
- An old town of coral and mangrove where donkeys still carry everything and almost nothing has an engine
- The Lamu Museum's ceremonial siwa horns, the finest surviving objects of the Swahili coast
- A dhow through the mangrove creek to Takwa, a Swahili town abandoned three hundred years ago
- The 12 km of empty sand running south from Shela village, with no road behind it
Where to stay
Lamu, two nights
The town runs along the waterfront and climbs a short way inland, with the seafront promenade and the jetties on one side and a grid of lanes behind it that stops being a grid within about fifty metres. The fort sits in the middle on the old market square, and the museum is on the front. South along the shore, past the mangroves, is Shela, and beyond Shela the beach runs for twelve kilometres to the end of the island with nothing on it.
The buildings are coral rag with mangrove-pole ceilings, built inward around courtyards so the street sees only a blank wall and a door. The doors are the display: carved teak, sometimes dated, sometimes with a chain of Arabic inscription across the lintel. Inside, the older houses have plaster wall niches cut in rows for porcelain, which was how a Lamu merchant showed you he traded with China.
It is a working town rather than a preserved one, and it is not tidy. Rubbish is a genuine problem, the drains are medieval and the donkeys are everywhere. What you get in exchange is a Swahili town still being lived in exactly as it was laid out, which is very close to unique on this coast.
Day by day
Day 1 in Lamu
The fort, the museum and the seafront
Start at the fort, which stands on the square where the town's fruit and vegetable market runs every morning. It was begun in 1813 by the Sultan of Pate and finished with Omani help by 1821, at a time when Lamu had just beaten Pate and Mombasa in battle and needed to keep what it had won. It has since been a garrison, a prison and a library, and the ramparts give you the best overview of how the town is packed together.
Then the Lamu Museum, on the waterfront in a tall white house built in 1891 as the British colonial residence. It is a small museum and an unusually good one, covering Swahili building, navigation, dress and the culture of the archipelago. The objects to look for are the siwas, ceremonial horns from Lamu and Pate, one of ivory and one of brass, made in the seventeenth century and among the most important surviving artefacts of the Swahili coast.
Then do nothing in particular. Walk the seafront to the far end, cut inland at random, and come out somewhere you did not intend. The town rewards this more than any itinerary does: workshops full of men carving doors, a school chanting through an open window, a courtyard with a bed frame being rebuilt in it, and the smell of mangrove smoke as the cooking starts.
- 15:00
Lamu Fort
CultureTicketed and open through the day. Half an hour, mostly for the ramparts and the view down into the market square.
- 16:30
Lamu Museum
CultureTicketed, an hour, and the siwa horns upstairs are the reason. Combined tickets with the fort and the Swahili House are usually available.
- 19:30
Dinner on a roof terrace
EatCrab, coconut rice, tamarind and whatever came in that morning. Most guesthouses will cook if you ask in the afternoon.
With more time: Riyadha Mosque, inland at the southern end of town, is the centre of Lamu's religious life and the focus of the Maulidi festival, when thousands come from across the region for days of processions, poetry and donkey racing. It is a working mosque, so ask before going in. The small galleries near the jetty are the best place to buy anything worth carrying home.
Day 2 in Lamu
A dhow to the Takwa ruins and the reef off Manda Toto
Take a boat out for the whole day, and let the tide decide the order. Takwa sits at the head of a mangrove creek on Manda Island, and the creek is only navigable around high water, so the skipper will tell you when you are leaving rather than the other way round.
Takwa was a walled Swahili town of a few thousand people, founded around 1500 and abandoned by about 1700, probably because the wells went salt. What is left is a Friday mosque with a tall pillar rising from its wall, house foundations, a well and a graveyard, all of it standing in scrub with monkeys in the trees and no one else there. It takes forty minutes to walk round and it is the most atmospheric ruin on the Kenyan coast, largely because nothing has been built to receive you.
In the afternoon, run out to Manda Toto, a small uninhabited island with a reef on its far side that is the best snorkelling in the archipelago. Most day dhows will grill the fish they caught on the way over on a beach fire while you are in the water. Take water, a hat and far more sun cream than you think, because there is no shade on a dhow and the sail is not where you want it to be.
- 09:00
Takwa Ruins
CultureReached by boat up a mangrove creek near high tide, with a small entry fee at the site. Allow an hour on the island.
- 13:00
Grilled fish on the beach
EatCooked over a fire by the crew, usually kingfish or snapper with coconut rice. Confirm lunch is included when you agree the price.
- 14:15
Manda Toto
NatureUninhabited, with the reef on the seaward side. Bring your own mask if you are particular; the boat's will be scratched.
With more time: If the tide is wrong for Takwa, the standard alternative is a sail down to Manda Bay and the beaches on the channel, or a sunset dhow, which costs a fraction of a day trip and is the single best hour on the island.
Day 3 in Lamu
The walk down the sand to Shela
Go early, while the sand is still cool. The walk from Lamu town to Shela follows the shore for about three kilometres and takes forty-five minutes, past the mangroves, the boatyards where dhows are still built by eye without drawings, and a stretch where at high tide you have to go inland or get wet. A boda-boda or a boat does it in a fraction of the time if the heat has already won.
Shela itself is a village of white houses and sand lanes, smaller and considerably more manicured than Lamu, with a couple of galleries, some very good places to eat and a mosque with a tapering minaret that is the landmark you steer by from the water. Then the beach: twelve kilometres of open sand running southwest with dunes behind it, no road, no development and usually nobody on it. The swimming is real swimming, with surf and a current, so stay where other people are.
Boats to the airport leave from either town, and the crossing takes five minutes. Give yourself an hour more than seems reasonable, because the tide, the boat and the check-in queue are three separate opportunities for delay.
- 08:00
Shela Beach
VisitForty-five minutes on foot from the town, or a short boat ride. Swimming is best away from the village end, and there is surf.
- 13:00
Boat to Manda airport
TravelFive minutes across the channel, plus the wait for a boat. Leave an hour's slack; there is nothing at the airstrip.
With more time: With another day, Kipungani at the far southwest of the island is a long beach walk or a short boat ride to almost nobody, and Manda Beach on the channel is the calm-water alternative when the surf at Shela is up.
Before you go
Getting in and out
Almost everybody flies. Manda airport is on the next island, a five minute boat ride across the channel from Lamu town, and there are daily flights from Nairobi's Wilson and Jomo Kenyatta airports and services from Mombasa and Malindi. Boats meet every arrival and the fare to Lamu town is small; Shela costs several times more.
Buses run from Mombasa via Malindi to Mokowe on the mainland, five to seven hours depending on the road, and a ferry finishes the journey. The public boat is cheap, crowded and leaves when it is full; a private one costs more and leaves when you do.
Check your own government's travel advice before booking. Several countries advise against travel to parts of Lamu County on the mainland because of the situation across the Somali border, while generally treating Lamu and Manda islands themselves as an exception. The islands have not been attacked and the town is calm, but the advisory can affect insurance.
Where to stay
Lamu town puts you inside the thing you came for: coral houses with interior courtyards, plaster niches, carved doors and roof terraces, most of them now guesthouses. It is noisier, dirtier and far more interesting than the alternative, and you can walk out at six in the morning into a town that is already working.
Shela, 3 km south, is quieter, cleaner, whiter and considerably more expensive, with the beach at the end of the lane and a strip of good restaurants. It is a lovely place to stay and it is not really Lamu.
Whole houses are rented out in both, usually with a cook and a housekeeper, and for a group they cost less per head than a hotel room. Air conditioning is rare and mostly unnecessary above the first floor.
Getting around
On foot in the town, which takes about twenty minutes to cross. The lanes are unnamed, sloped for drainage and lit badly or not at all, so bring a torch for walking back after dinner. Watch where you put your feet: the donkeys are working animals and nobody follows them with a shovel.
Between Lamu and Shela you either walk the seafront and the beach, about forty-five minutes and impossible at the highest tides, or take a motorcycle taxi, or take a boat. The boat is the pleasant option and costs very little.
Everything else is a dhow. Prices are negotiated on the waterfront, the negotiation is the local sport, and the going rate is worth asking your guesthouse about before you start. Agree what is included, especially lunch and the return time.
Dress, drink and the touts
Lamu is a conservative Muslim town and a residential one. Shoulders and knees covered away from the beach applies to everybody, and swimwear belongs at Shela and nowhere else. During Ramadan much of the town closes during daylight.
Alcohol is served in the hotels and restaurants that cater to visitors, particularly in Shela, and is not sold openly in the town. Water should be bottled or filtered, and the heat is heavy from November to March.
The beach boys on the seafront are persistent rather than dangerous and will offer you a dhow trip roughly every forty metres. A friendly, definite no works. Booking through your guesthouse costs about the same and avoids the whole performance.
Lamu takes a day to adjust to and then becomes very hard to leave. There is nothing to be efficient about: the boat goes when the tide says, the donkey has right of way, and the best afternoon of the trip will be one you did not plan, sitting on a wall watching a dhow being planked by two men and a boy.
From here the archipelago goes on. Pate island, an hour or two by boat, has Siyu with its fort and Faza and the ruins at Shanga, and sees a fraction of the visitors. South, the coast runs back through Malindi and Watamu to Mombasa, and the flight to Nairobi puts you in the middle of the country in ninety minutes.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Lamu safe to visit?
- Lamu and Manda islands are calm and have not been attacked, and walking the town at night is normal. Several governments still advise against travel to parts of Lamu County on the mainland, usually excepting the islands, which is a distinction worth checking on your own foreign ministry's page because it affects travel insurance. The overwhelming likelier problem is a persistent tout.
- How do I get to Lamu?
- Fly to Manda airstrip from Nairobi, Mombasa or Malindi and take the five minute boat across, which is what almost everyone does. The overland alternative is a bus from Mombasa via Malindi to Mokowe, five to seven hours, then a ferry.
- Should I stay in Lamu town or Shela?
- Lamu town if you want the place itself: markets, donkeys, carved doors, calls to prayer, and a house you walk home to through unlit lanes. Shela if you want the beach at the end of the road, quieter nights and better restaurants. They are forty-five minutes apart on foot, so you will see both either way.
- What should I wear?
- Shoulders and knees covered in the town, for men and women. Swimwear is for Shela beach and hotel pools only. Lamu is a conservative town where people live, and dressing carelessly reads as contempt rather than as informality.
- When is the best time to go?
- June to October is dry and breezy and the most comfortable. December to March is hot and bright and the busiest. The long rains in April and May close a lot of places. The Lamu Cultural Festival in November brings donkey races and dhow races, and Maulidi moves with the Islamic calendar.
- How much should a dhow trip cost?
- Ask your guesthouse for the going rate before you talk to anyone on the seafront, and agree in advance what is included: the destinations, lunch, snorkelling gear and the time you come back. Booking through the guesthouse costs about the same and comes with somebody to complain to.