Our blog below keeps you abreast of developments.

A-gardening we go.

With World Travel Market approaching, I finally find an excuse to get builders out and prepare a room for some photos. This means meticulously clearing away the rubble from between the roots of what is there, with a crack team of 20 local women, heavy on the hoe, carrying carefully-considered loads away.

The nursery was prepared when we first broke soil on site, blooming into a verdant cornucopia of assorted foliage, and the hard work of the gardening team, led by Len and Francesca, is now paying bounteous dividend. It is not an easy task, though, when all of the land beneath is coral-hard scrub, and the first pavilion has needed 15 truck-loads of soil and bat pooh (a particularly fine fertiliser) to reach their expectations of fertile ground.

The result is breathtaking, though. Having recently discovered that the word paradise comes from a Persian word referring to "the perfect walled garden", I think we can safely say that our pavilions are in fact just that.

We have been trying to think of the appropriate name for our "units". After all, what would be the appropriate noun for an open space with three-quarter round walls, two cascading rainwater pools (there's a waterfall between them), a lush, tropical garden and seperate domed spaces for sleeping, bathing and relaxing?

The tourism industry is surprisingly unimaginitive in this regard, especially for one that regularly wields the hyperbole stick whenever their marketing materials require it (c.f Kenya's recent attempts to cash in on Barack's popularity). We in hospitality are unashamed to stoop low when scraping the novelty barrel (Masai Massages, anyone?) and yet the best that we can do when it comes to the naming of hospitality spaces is to borrow from the mundane domestic housing nomenclature with such wonderfully exotic names as bungalows, cottages, villas and suites, or, if they are in the bush and made from canvas, we call them, well...... tents. Of course, we do.

In the search for names so far, we have considered (or at least paid lip-service to) casbahs, enclaves, palaces, beits (Swahili merchants' house), jumbe, nyumba (Swahili house) etc. Too boring and too unrepresentative by far.

However, today,, in another of the daily moments of revelation that regularly light up Kilindi HQ, it was settled - PAVILIONS!

To quote from Wikipedia... "Pavilion may refer to a free-standing structure sited a short distance from a main residence, whose architecture makes it an object of pleasure.... Large or small, there is usually a connection with relaxation and pleasure in its intended use"

So we have it: Pavilion. Built for pleasure and relaxation, often exotic in design, and reminiscent of some of the great Victorian/Edwardian follies of their time. I can think of no better term. Pavilions, pavilions, pavilions.

And, if I haven't made this clear already, there are fifteen of them. Pavilions, that is.

We are getting closer to trading (delayed only by this blog being finally put up, ahem) but a major worry in the swarm of worries that besiege us every day was agreeing on an opening cost genuinely worthy of such incomparable, eye-watering hospitality, but that does not alienate our dear agents too much to have reservations about their reservations with us.

We are, after all, a new property (albeit a truly remarkable one), in a long-haul destination (albeit THE great exotic one), of a less-than-conventional luxury style (albeit utterly, unquestionably unique) and there is, lest we forget it, a major economic crisis crunching discretionary travel as I type.

We had originally intended to quote in euros, simply because we stand buttress to tentpole with fellow lodges and camps on the safari circuit, whose rates we all know, and it is becoming the cuirrency of choice for the discerning property.

However, with the Euro looming large against the Pound and the Dollar, folks seemingly unable to go on holiday anywhere at all and all being distinctly un-rosy in the World Economy garden, we have listened sympathetically to our dear agents and done the honourable thing, quoting in USD for 2009.

Contact Bobby for details.

Happy New Year to all of our friends and devotees.

We're not ones to crow, we at Kilindi, graced as we are with the humility of superiority, but even our noblesse oblige is becoming a little skittery beneath the vivid glare of media interest that we find ourselves attracting. It could almost be embarassing, but we accept it to be the inevitable result of Kilindi's unique status, and smile bashfully at each request for more information from a prominent publication.

Inevitable, we tell ourselves, reminding ourselves of Oscar Wilde's observation that "the only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about". So be it, we say, bring it on.

We shall hold back from full disclosure for now, and refrain from mentioning names until they publish, but the big names are all represented and we shudder to think what will happen when we actually open, and start marketing.

The containers that entered Dar es Salaam port on the 23rd October, have finally been released, shipped to Zanzibar, cleared there and delivered to site on the 20th January, only three months later. It was a special day for us. finally welcoming our beloved water treatment plant onto site, and we captured the moment for posterity.

In order to avoid this happening again, we have had to muster the considerable resouces of resourcefulness at our disposal, to seek alternative routes to our site without passing the major international port that represents the only port of call for 98% of shipping lines.

As I write, we have a kitchen in Dubai, where it is being transferred to a slow boat to Zanzibar, a 40 foot container crammed to the hinges with interiors being driven BY ROAD from Johannesburg so as to enter the country at the land border of Malawi, and 2 tonnes of artisan recycled glass on a perilous dhow route by a full moon to a firm beach.

This is not an easy process, especially as each one needs appropriate documents, exemptions certificates and more arcane paperwork than should be needed for the process of recieving paid for goods, but the hair-dye, tranquilisers and nail guards are worth it, because it means we can now say, with hand on heart, that we will be open 1st March.