The morning light over the Rift Valley is blunt and honest — a band of gold that slides down escarpment and sets the soda lakes ablaze. On day one, the van eases away from Nairobi’s traffic and climbs toward a viewpoint where the caldera walls fall away like pages. Lake Bogoria’s shallows flare pink with flamingos; hydrothermal steam presses at the shoreline and the air tastes faintly of mineral and heat. Over six days the route becomes a rhythm: crater rims and bird choked lagoons, bicycle tracks in Hell’s Gate, and then the wide, wind-swept grass of the Masai Mara where lions and elephants roam like punctuation on the horizon.