In his new book SAFARI: A Memoir of a Worldwide Travel Pioneer (HarperCollins, hardcover, on sale September 1), he invites readers on a tour of some of the remotest locations on earth.
Geoffrey Kent, founder and CEO of Abercrombie & Kent, has opened up about his decades spent on the cutting edge of experiential travel, a concept he introduced more than five decades ago.
In his new book SAFARI: A Memoir of a Worldwide Travel Pioneer (HarperCollins, hardcover, on sale September 1), he invites readers on a tour of some of the remotest locations on earth.
The son of a London debutante and a soldier in the King’s African Rifles stationed in Kenya, Kent was born while his parents were on safari in Northern Rhodesia in 1942.
Raised on a farm northwest of Nairobi, Kent absorbed everything a boy growing up in Africa should know about the land and its inhabitants. On an elephant safari to mark his passage into adulthood he received a ritual gift, a bracelet made from the hair of the animal’s tail.
Recognising an opportunity, he began selling these good luck symbols, and after a couple of months, his business was more profitable than the farm.
With its proceeds he bought a motorcycle and became the first person to bike the 3,000 miles from Nairobi to Cape Town.
After climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, he departed for the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst as one of its youngest cadets. After service in the British Army, he returned home to Kenya.
When a new government seized his parents’ acreage, the family decided to found a travel company, capitalising on his father’s familiarity with the continent. Abercrombie sounded grand and put them at the beginning of the phone book.
In 1962 Kent was officially the first East African safari outfitter to introduce mobile refrigeration, and his gamble to invest everything in this start-up enterprise paid off.
There is much more to the story of A&K and Geoffrey Kent – and it’s all in a great book.