A Kenyan adventure family
We do not simply sell East Africa. We live it.
Wilderness Alternative Expedition is a small Kenyan owned company for travellers who want mountains, wildlife and coastlines to feel personal. We design private and scheduled journeys with time to notice what most itineraries hurry past.
Our story
Adventure lovers creating journeys for adventure lovers.
We are a small Kenyan owned adventure company running private and scheduled trips across East Africa. We are not interested in making a place feel like a product. We want every journey to feel like a relationship with the landscape, the people who know it, and the travellers sharing the road.
Our work has taken guests to Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro, across Mount Kenya, through the wildlife country of Kenya and Tanzania, and beneath the Indian Ocean on diving journeys in Wasini, Diani and Mombasa. The terrain changes, but our way of working does not. We listen, prepare carefully, travel in small groups and trust local knowledge.
We are proud to be the best Mount Kenya climbing company, not because we move the greatest number of people, but because we do the fundamentals exceptionally well. That means honest preparation, patient acclimatisation, excellent guiding, good equipment, fair decisions and a team that is proud to be on the mountain.
Many of the people who begin as guests remain part of our family long after the journey ends. They come from Kenya and across the world, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States and the Middle East. What connects them is not nationality. It is curiosity, respect and a desire to experience East Africa with more depth.
The old safari rhythm
The best moments are rarely the ones that can be rushed.
We still believe in stopping to smell a flower on a mountain trail. We believe a safari vehicle should not feel crowded, and that watching one animal quietly from a respectful distance can mean more than racing between sightings.
Small by choice
Private and carefully sized scheduled departures allow us to protect safety, attention and the freedom to change pace when the day asks for it.
Local knowledge leads
Guides, porters, drivers, naturalists and community partners are not background figures. Their experience shapes the route, the safety plan and the stories a traveller carries home.
Comfort with character
We value a lodge beside a river, an uncrowded vehicle, a well prepared mountain camp and seamless logistics. Luxury is the freedom to be present, not a layer separating you from a place.
Adventure with purpose
Tourism should leave value where it happens. We work toward fair relationships, practical conservation and community benefit that continues after a visitor has gone home.
What we stand for
Respect is part of the route.
The mountains, wildlife areas and coastlines where we work already have guardians. Our role is to travel with respect for their knowledge, their work and their right to benefit from tourism.
- Safety before speed
- Thoughtful pacing, trained teams, sound equipment and decisions made for the conditions on the ground.
- People before volume
- A small company can know its crews, its partners and its guests. We intend to keep that closeness as we grow.
- The best paid mountain crews
- Our mountain crews in Kenya and Tanzania are the best paid on their respective mountains. Better pay, proper equipment and genuine respect create safer expeditions and happier teams.
- Conservation through attention
- Low impact travel begins by noticing the living world, listening to local guidance and refusing to turn wildlife into a race.
How we choose and develop guides
Qualifications open the door. Judgement earns trust.
Wilderness Alternative deliberately works with professional guides and continues to develop them after recruitment. Across the safari team, three guides hold Silver-level Kenya Professional Safari Guides Association qualifications and the guide team has Wilderness First Aid training.
We also look for destination knowledge, route familiarity, communication, patience, wildlife ethics, practical problem solving and the ability to read a traveller. Field briefings, equipment checks, refresher work and trip debriefs turn individual experience into a stronger operating culture.
- Professional foundation
- Relevant qualifications, Wilderness First Aid and proven field experience.
- Before the trip
- Client needs, route, conditions, equipment and communication are briefed.
- After the trip
- Debriefs capture what changed, what worked and what the next operation should learn.
Meet our team
The people behind the journey.
Meet the people who connect every part of the journey: mountains, safari, coast, field operations, crew welfare and community work. Choose a name below or continue through the complete family story.
Founder and expedition guide
Kennedy Mutuma
A teacher and software engineer by profession, a guide at heart, and a photographer wherever the light is good.
Kennedy founded Wilderness Alternative Expedition around a simple conviction: an adventure can be serious about safety and still be full of wonder, humour and human connection. He is a rock climber, writer, photographer and extreme sport enthusiast who feels most at home where a route demands patience.
Read Kennedy’s full story
He has completed more than twenty successful ascents of Batian, the highest summit of Mount Kenya. He has long since lost count of his other days on Mount Kenya, just as he has lost count of the lions he has waited to photograph. What remains memorable are the people, the weather, the decisions and the small details that made each day different.
Kennedy once took a bicycle up Mount Kenya, not because a mountain needed another record, but because curiosity is central to how he understands adventure. The same curiosity drives his teaching, writing, photography, software work and humanitarian projects. For him, a journey matters most when it creates confidence, knowledge or opportunity for someone else.
He remains closely involved in planning and in the field. He listens to the team, follows the details and is happiest when guests stop asking what comes next and begin noticing where they are.
- Mountaineering and rock climbing
- Expedition planning and guiding
- Photography and field storytelling
- Education, technology and community work
Head guide and porter welfare lead
Joseph Kimani
Kennedy often says there can be no Kennedy as a Mount Kenya guide without Joseph. Everything he first learned about the mountain was taught with Joseph beside him.
Joseph has climbed and worked on Mount Kenya for fifteen years. Today he is our head guide, leads a team of eight other guides and is responsible for porter welfare, making sure the people carrying an expedition are properly fed, properly equipped, listened to and respected.
Joseph did not only teach Kennedy the mountain. Together, they decided that the people carrying an expedition deserved to be cared for too.
Read Joseph and Kennedy’s story
Kennedy met Joseph when Kennedy was eighteen, during only his second climb of Mount Kenya. Joseph was working as a porter. He knew how to read the mountain beyond the route: the change in the wind, the pace a tired climber could sustain, the moment to wait, and the small decisions that keep a team together. That meeting became a mentorship and, in time, a friendship at the heart of Wilderness Alternative Expedition.
On that early climb, Kennedy also saw what life could be like for porters. Many carried packaged food for themselves while carrying everything needed by an expedition. He began asking a question that would not leave him: how could a better Mount Kenya company care for guests while failing to care for the crew who made the climb possible?
Kennedy and Joseph chose to build a different kind of company: one that would advocate for fair wages, create healthy competition through higher standards and measure a successful expedition by more than the summit. Wilderness Alternative became the first company on Mount Kenya to provide full meals for porters and to issue rain jackets to its mountain crew. What began as a promise between a young climber and a porter became part of how we operate every expedition.
Joseph now carries that promise forward. As head guide he mentors eight guides, and as head of porter welfare he follows the details that are easy for others to miss: meals, equipment, loads, weather protection and whether a crew member feels able to speak. His leadership is quiet, practical and deeply trusted. For Kennedy, Joseph remains a teacher. For the company, he is one of its foundations.
- Fifteen years on Mount Kenya
- Head guide
- Porter welfare lead
- Leads eight guides
- Mountain safety and mentorship
Moshi branch lead and Kilimanjaro head guide
Emanuel Wako
For many Kilimanjaro guests, Emanuel is the first Wilderness Alternative face they meet at Kilimanjaro International Airport and the steady presence they trust all the way to Uhuru Peak.
Emanuel has summited Uhuru Peak so many times that he has lost count. He leads our Moshi branch, heads the Kilimanjaro guiding team and connects the welcoming details on the ground with the demanding work of a mountain expedition.
A Kilimanjaro climb begins before the first step. It begins with a welcome at the airport, dependable equipment and a team that is ready for the mountain.
Read Emanuel’s full story
The Moshi branch began as a small business Kennedy opened to give our Kilimanjaro work a permanent home. It is an office, a hiking gear store and a small rental shop where expedition equipment can be kept, checked and prepared close to the mountain. Emanuel is the person who gives that place its daily rhythm.
When he is not guiding, Emanuel can usually be found in the shop helping a climber find the right equipment or working through the practical jobs behind every departure. He is responsible for tent maintenance, checking that shelters are clean, sound and ready before they are carried onto Kilimanjaro.
Emanuel coordinates nine other Kilimanjaro guides. Three guides are permanent members of the Moshi team, while the others join expeditions on a freelance basis as departures require. His role is to bring that wider team together around the same standards of safety, preparation, care and respect.
His responsibilities stretch from the airport arrival to the summit and safely home again. He may be the person holding your name at Kilimanjaro International Airport, the guide reading your pace above the clouds, or the person back in Moshi making sure the next set of tents is ready. Emanuel is also Kennedy’s friend, and that friendship gives the Moshi branch the feeling of a small family business even as the Kilimanjaro team grows.
- Kilimanjaro head guide
- Moshi branch lead
- Leads nine guides
- Gear rental and tent maintenance
- Airport welcome and expedition support
Rwenzori mountain contacts and expedition guides
Geofrey and Kip
They grew up in the ranges of the Rwenzori, where mountain knowledge is learned through weather, forest, water and years of walking patiently through one of Africa’s most extraordinary landscapes.
Kennedy met Geofrey and Kip in 2020 while carrying out a reconnaissance journey in the Rwenzori Mountains. What began as route finding became a lasting working relationship built on patience, intelligence and the calm assurance of people who know this mountain as home.
In the Rwenzori, patience is not about moving slowly. It is about noticing what the mountain is saying before deciding the next step.
Read Geofrey and Kip’s story
The Rwenzori is a mountain range of many worlds. A journey can begin beneath dense forest, pass through giant heathers and groundsels, reach the quiet shores of Bujuku, and finish among rock, ice and cloud on the high peaks. Geofrey and Kip grew up close to these changing landscapes. Their knowledge was not collected for a brochure; it was built over a lifetime of observing seasons, trails, rivers, plants, birds and the behaviour of the mountain in difficult weather.
During Kennedy’s 2020 reconnaissance, he was struck by their patience. They never hurried a decision to appear impressive. They watched the weather, listened to the team and allowed the mountain to set the rhythm. That is the kind of judgement we value because Rwenzori guiding is not only about knowing where a trail goes. It is about knowing how people are feeling, when conditions are changing and when a safe journey requires time.
Geofrey brings a remarkable knowledge of the birdlife around Bujuku and the Rwenzori forest. A call can come from somewhere inside the canopy, long before anyone sees the bird, and he can often name it from the sound alone. Ask him about a bird and he will tell you where it lives, how it behaves and what to listen for. His intelligence turns a long forest day into a living lesson, helping guests understand that the Rwenzori is not simply a route to a summit but an entire high altitude ecosystem.
Kip shares the same patient mountain character and works beside Geofrey to connect guests with the practical rhythm of a Rwenzori expedition. Together they are our trusted contacts on the range, linking local knowledge, reliable organisation and deeply personal guiding. The summit photograph matters, but the real story is everything they do before it: the careful pace, the quiet encouragement and the hundreds of good decisions that help a guest stand safely on Margherita Peak.
- Rwenzori expedition guiding
- Margherita Peak and high altitude safety
- Bujuku and Rwenzori forest birdlife
- Patient pacing and guest care
- Local logistics and route knowledge
Senior safari guide and Kurunzi Fund board treasurer
Moses Kironjo
Moses knows the Maasai Mara like the back of his hand, but his place in our family reaches far beyond safari. One thoughtful introduction by Moses brought Elizabeth Blanchford and Kennedy together and helped begin a story that would eventually touch hundreds of young lives.
Moses is a superb safari guide, a trusted friend, a Kurunzi Fund board member and the board’s treasurer. There is a strong chance that when you travel with us to the Maasai Mara, Moses will be the person at the wheel, reading the landscape, sharing its stories and knowing where to pause long before anyone else understands why.
Wilderness Alternative is a family because our journeys are built from friendships that continue to create new friendships, new opportunities and new reasons to care.
Read Moses’s full story
Elizabeth Blanchford was visiting Kenya for the second time and looking for someone who could guide her on Mount Kenya. When she asked Moses for help, he searched through Facebook and found a young Kennedy. Moses reached out, received a reply and connected the two of them. It was a simple act of generosity: a friend recognising that two people should know one another.
That introduction became the beginning of a beautiful partnership. Elizabeth and Kennedy met, shared ideas and later became co-founders of the Kurunzi Fund. Their work now supports school feeding programmes, school gardens, scholarships and practical improvements in rural Kenyan schools. Moses did not make the introduction expecting a grand result, but the lives changed through Kurunzi are part of the long echo of that first message.
Moses remains part of the work he helped set in motion. As a member of the Kurunzi Fund board and its treasurer, he carries a formal responsibility for stewardship, accountability and careful use of the resources entrusted to the organisation. His presence connects the friendship at the beginning of the story with the transparency and responsibility required to keep the work moving forward.
In the Maasai Mara, Moses’s knowledge is just as deeply rooted. He understands its tracks, river crossings, open plains and hidden corners, and he knows that a great safari is not a race between sightings. It is the patience to follow signs, the judgement to keep a respectful distance and the ability to turn one quiet observation into a story a guest will remember for years. He can read the Mara like a familiar page while still treating every day as different.
For Kennedy, Moses is not simply a guide or colleague. He is a friend whose decision to connect two people helped shape both Wilderness Alternative’s family and the humanitarian work close to its heart. That is why our team is more than a list of job titles. It is a network of trust, shared history and people who continue to show up for one another.
- Maasai Mara safari guiding
- Wildlife tracking and interpretation
- Kurunzi Fund board member
- Board treasurer and accountability
- Guest care and safari logistics
Coastal expedition guide and Wasini trip organiser
Fathy Shipa
Fathy grew up with the Indian Ocean as his horizon, classroom and second home. Around Wasini, people know him as an ocean expert. Within our family, we call him the Dolphin Whisperer.
He organises our Wasini journeys, guides diving and snorkelling experiences, reads the tides and brings together the boats, equipment, timing and local knowledge that turn a day on the coast into a safe and deeply personal marine adventure.
Fathy does not simply take guests onto the ocean. He helps them slow down enough to understand what the water, wind and wildlife are doing around them.
Read Fathy’s full story
Some guides learn the coast as a destination. Fathy learned it as home. He grew up watching the Indian Ocean change through the day and across the seasons: the direction of the wind, the colour of the water, the pull of a current and the places where marine life gathers. That long familiarity gives him the calm confidence of someone who never needs to pretend the ocean is predictable.
Fathy is central to our Wasini trips. He coordinates local boats and crews, checks conditions, prepares equipment and matches the day to the experience of each guest. He guides scuba diving and snorkelling trips, dolphin watching, reef exploration, traditional boat journeys, sandbank visits and time around Wasini Island. He can also help guests experience mangroves, coastal villages and the food and culture that make the southern Kenyan coast more than a beautiful strip of water.
We call him the Dolphin Whisperer with affection. It does not mean he controls wild animals or guarantees a sighting. It means he notices what others miss: movement on the surface, changing bird activity, a current line, a distant fin and the quiet signals that come from years on the water. He knows when to approach slowly, when to keep a respectful distance and when the best decision is simply to watch.
Beneath the surface, Fathy is equally at home. He helps divers and snorkellers settle their breathing, understand the reef and look beyond the obvious. Coral formations, reef fish, turtles and the changing texture of the seabed become part of one connected story. His purpose is not to rush guests through a checklist. It is to help them feel comfortable enough to become curious.
The coast completes the Wilderness Alternative family. Kennedy may be at home on a mountain wall, Moses may be reading tracks in the Mara, and Fathy may be listening to the ocean near Wasini, but the principle is the same: local knowledge leads, safety comes first and a guest should leave with a relationship to the place rather than only photographs of it.
- Wasini trip organisation
- Scuba diving and snorkelling
- Dolphin watching and marine interpretation
- Boats, tides and coastal safety
- Reefs, sandbanks, mangroves and island visits
Travel with people who care
Come for East Africa. Leave with a relationship to it.
Tell us what you want to climb, see, learn or feel. We will shape a journey around your pace, your interests and the realities of the ground.