The World’s Toughest Classic Rally took drivers and their crews across Kenya’s diverse landscapes in a 9-day race against the clock. These were the moments I got to capture.

SS1 Eburu to Elementaita

I left Nairobi Metropolitan shortly after 3am on Thursday 10th February, joined six other photographers in Naivasha and drove straight to the stage, getting there at around 5.30am.

Driving in the dark, it was hard to tell where exactly we were. We navigated slowly past villages still asleep, found the first hair pin, parked our cars by the side of the road and waited for the sunrise to reveal what surrounded us.

We were not disappointed.

The first rally car came through at 7.54am, bringing brotherly chats about podium predictions after 9 days of rallying to a dusty halt.

It was Kris Rosenberger and Nicola Bleicher in a Porsche 911.

Baldev Chager and Drew Sturrock.

Patrik Sandell and Henrik Bolinder.

I changed my position to capture the morning light slapping the rally cars beautifully.

Raaji Bharji and Tauseef Khan.

Ken Block and Alex Gelsomino.

Philip Kadoorie and Ryan Champion.

Geoff Bell and Tim Challen.

Piers Daykin and Pierre Arries.

Jonathan Somen and Richard Hechle.

Frank Tundo and Gareth Dawe overshot a hairpin and ended up sideways in a ditch. The sequence below shows how the off happened.

Joost van Cauwenberge and Jacques Castelein in a Porsche 911 passed Frank Tundo and Gareth Dawe.

In true Kenyan spirit, spectators pulled together and got Frank Tundo and Gareth Dawe back on track, enabling them to finish the stage.

Here is a vide of the rescue efforts, showing Kenyans in their true element.

Evgeny Kireev and Dale Furniss.

Richard Arrowsmith and Tej Sehmi.

David Danglard and Gavin Lawrence.

Remon Vos and Stephane Prevot.

Simon and Jonathan Connolly.

Scott Armstrong and Farhaaz Khan.

Iain Dobson and Robert Calder.

After this, I decided to get a little more creative with the compositions, including more location identifiers into the photos.

Mitch and Kim McCullough.

Frederico Polese and Nicolas Arena.

Steve and Russell Parkinson.

Jamie Clarke and Kenny MacFadyen.

Evans Kavisi and Absalom Aswani.

Hamza Anwar and Sanjay Wason.

Antonio Pinto dos Santos and Nuno Rodrigues da Silva were the last to pass us in a Renault 4.

They slowed down for the hair pin, swung their doors open and waved at us. They were having a fun time.

Amboseli Game Drive

After spending the weekend with family, I resumed Classic Rally Action in Amboseli and was joined by fellow rally fan Juliana Rotich. Being a rest day for the drivers and crews, we decided to take a short game drive in Kilimanjaro’s fore court to experience it’s awesome beauty.

There was an ongoing baby boom, with many animals nursing their young.

For others, courtship was ongoing.

Back to the Action

The following morning, Tuesday 15th February, we took another game drive through Amboseli on our way to the day’s rally action.

CS 13 Meshenani Gate to Elenkay

This section was easy to find. The coordinates to the start point were on point. We picked a section that had promising fesh fesh, masked up and waited to be covered in dust.

The fesh fesh didn’t hold back these old timers, with all the cars speeding through uneventfully.

After this, I found that switching my position to shoot into the sun led to shots of beautifully-illuminated dust.

I then decided to throw in vegetation as old as the cars themselves into the later shots.

CS 15 Isineti to Amboseli Park

Being that most of the day’s action was being run on public roads with minimal traffic, finding this section wasn’t easy. The maps provided weren’t helpful and a KWS ranger we found at Meshenani Gate was not aware about where we could catch the action.

Juliana and I spotted Simon Mulumba and George Kanyingi who were shooting for the Kabras Racing Team headed to the section and we decided to follow them, driving on narrow paths across washed out village roads in the hot midday heat.

They led us to a section where we ended up seeing cars passing twice!

These morans own the land where we had parked to watch the rally cars.

They had enough acres of dust from the rally cars.

After hiding behind a thick blanket of clouds most of the day, Kilimanjaro revealed itself in the evening, giving us a peek at it’s peak. This was a 30-second exposure at f/5.0, ISO 320 at 10.15pm.

CS 18 Ndi to Maktau

Our plan on this day was to cover CS 17 Tsavo Road to Tsavo River with the hope of capturing the cars zooming past the Shetani Lava Flows. But after the section was cancelled because of excess roadworks, we settled on the last few kilometres of CS 18 which turned out to be no more than a ‘push your engine to the limit’ straight shot to the finish line.

I picked a tree with branches hanging above the road and shot away.

Flash in a flash!

I was hoping to get a longer streak of Flash Tundo’s car in frame but the bright sun allowed me to capture just a 0.1 sec exposure at f/22 and ISO 100, despite using an ND8 filter.

This was my favourite image of the day.

The two entrepreneurs on the boda boda had come from spraying some livestock. They had collected some firewood on their way to the next client and had to wait for the rally cars to pass before they went on to fulfil their economic duty.

From here, it took us about an hour to get to Voi, our rest for the night.

We were welcomed by herds of elephants at Voi Wildlife Lodge.

Unscheduled Rest Day

Thursday 17th February ended being a rest day of sorts.

I started the day having an interview with CNN for Inside Africa.

They were telling the stories of people who were working around the Classic Rally, from mechs to navigators to photographers.

After this, Juliana departed for Nairobi and I set out to catch the rally action, with the CNN crew in tow. The plan was for them to film some b-roll of me in action.

The start point coordinates on this day were off though. We found ourselves alone in the Tsavo wilderness with no other people in sight, only elephants, giraffe and the occasional zebra crossing were around.

Phone network was patchy so we couldn’t find someone to point us in the right direction.

We decided to drive to the Sala Gate from where we would hopefully see some cars speeding to the finish. It was a 2-hour drive on rocky murram roads. When we got to Sala Gate, all we saw were cars proceeding slowly out of Tsavo East.

I did however manage to catch Ken Block enjoying an aerial view of Tsavo.

Service at Sala Gate

At Sala Gate, service crews were getting their hands dirty putting rally cars back in shape before the 100km straight to Watamu for the day’s parc fermé.

These are the on-the-ground heroes behind the podium heroes.

From here, it was a long lonely drive towards Watamu, with nothing much to see or pass along the way.

Classic Rally Image of the Year

Pardon me declaring it is without consulting other people but I truly believe it is.

As I got to Mongotini on my drive to Watamu, the sight of tall trees that were part of a forest on the right side of the road caught my eye. I parked my car by the left, my intention being to capture rally cars on their way to Watamu through the straight line of trees.

Upon crossing the road, I saw these children playing by the trees, taking a break to cheer on the cars that were passing by their homes.

I immediately thought it would be nice to capture one of them watching the rally cars with his rally car.

What I captured was just OK. It wasn’t a winner. It needed something more. It needed movement. It needed interaction.

I asked the boy – Isaac Jumaa – to run towards me when the next car came through; and he did.

I fired about four frames and this became my favourite image from the Classic Rally.

The joy I felt after taking this image made me smile as hard as Isaac all the way to Watamu.

By now, exhaustion was beginning to set in. I told myself, ‘Just one day more, and you can finally relax at the beach.’

CS 24 Arabuko Forest to Sosoni

On the last day of the rally, I chose to cover the last stage at Dzunguni Village which is just a few kilometres from the finish line.

I included the palm trees in this shot to bring location context.

Juliana Rotich in an impromptu tech class with pupils from Ezamoyo Primary School.

After this, the reality of how exhausted I was checked in and after lunch with friends by the beach in Watamu, I skipped the awards ceremony and chose to sleep early to get enough rest before my 10+ hour drive back to Nairobi the following day.

I can only imagine how tired the drivers and crew were after 9 days of rallying and over 3,000kms of travel.

This was my first Safari Classic Rally. The combination of travel and sporting action wrapped up in the camaraderie that makes it more friendly than it is competitive has made it my favourite motorsport event. I’m already looking forward to the next one.

If you fancy some more rally action, have a look at these two posts:

2021 WRC Safari Rally and 2021 ARC Equator Rally.

CNN did a feature on the EASCR in which I got featured. Read it here.