These Little-known Islands Off the Coast of Kenya Are Home to the Oldest Swahili Settlements in East Africa — Here's Where to Stay

When you land at the miniature airport in Lamu, a group of islands off the coast of Kenya, the first thing you do is walk down a long pier to a waiting dhow. You step aboard. You smell the old wood of the sailing boat, the design of which goes back centuries. Across a narrow channel in the Indian Ocean you see Lamu Town, the oldest and best-preserved Swahili settlement in East Africa and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

As your dhow putters along, you begin to make out weathered, whitewashed buildings overlooking the water, thatched roofs, shadowed walkways, and coconut palms. Far-flung yet thriving, Lamu Island has stood by itself for hundreds of years as a trading hub between Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and India. Today’s trade is mostly tourism, but Lamu still feels beautifully separated from the rest of the world.

When my wife, our two sons, and I arrived at the iconic Peponi Hotel, which sits about two miles down the beach from Lamu Town, the staff welcomed us with hugs and ushered us onto the bright veranda. We’d flown all the way from London, with the requisite stopover in Nairobi (there are also flights from Mombasa), and the Peponi team could sense we’d had a long journey. Their message was simple: relax. The interior of the hotel was cool, airy, and white. Just feet away, the water was clear as glass.

We were also traveling with my friend Shalini, who’d never been to Lamu before. She looked around and beamed, then said: “I want to come back already.”

Lamu has a seductive power that’s stronger than just about anywhere else I’ve been. Yes, celebrities from the Obamas to Madonna, Kate Moss, and Mick Jagger have discovered it. And the pandemic was kind to it: wealthy, adventurous people realized that if you were going to be locked down anywhere, you might as well do it on a seven-by-four-mile tropical island with spectacular beaches, tons of sunshine, and a laid-back atmosphere. In a world coming to pieces, Lamu was exactly what the doctor ordered.

But Lamu’s real beauty is that it hasn’t let success go to its head. The residents are just as genuine and warm as they were 30 years ago, when Shela Beach, now the most popular on the island, was deserted, with no sparkling white vacation villas lining the sand. I first rolled up there in 1992 as a scruffy backpacker and found a room in a beachside house where I slept in a hammock next to some guy from New Zealand. Since then I’ve been back more than 20 times. My family and I lived in Kenya for more than a decade, and Lamu remains a treat that we never seem to tire of.

Why do we like it so much? Maybe it’s the fact that the island has almost no cars, because its streets are too narrow, so you go everywhere on foot or by boat. Or that women in full hijab saunter down the beach past sunbathers sprawled out on the sand, and both parties actually smile at one another. There’s the fragrance of mangoes ripening in Lamu Town’s friendly market, cutting through the scent of crisping samosas and salty sea air. There’s the eight-mile white-sand beach that is still mostly deserted and loaded with millions of delicate shells, and the fact that the beach is perfect for swimming: two steps into the water and — plunk! — you’re enveloped head to toe by the Indian Ocean, warm every day of the year.

The Peponi Hotel is another reason. Since it opened more than 50 years ago, Peponi, which means both “place in the wind” and “paradise” in Swahili, has been the place to stay. Lamu has a handful of small hotels and resorts, but Peponi is known for the best food, the liveliest scene, the classiest rooms, and the perfect location just outside the village of Shela, on a curve of Shela Beach that, when it’s hot — and it often is — perfectly captures the breeze.

Carol Korschen, whose family owns Peponi, is not only manager but chief executive organizer. She has her opinions, from the exact hour at which one should walk into Lamu Town to what to eat with your prawn curry. But she has lived on Lamu for the majority of her adult life and has catered to thousands of high-maintenance guests, so she’s usually right. I’ve learned to (mostly) shut up and let her organize our entire itinerary, whether that entails a place to have lunch or a sunset sailboat ride.

On the first full day of a recent nine-day vacation, we caught Peponi’s dhow into Lamu Town. Continuously inhabited for the past 700 years, it’s is a maze of snaking alleyways, small squares, mosques, and tucked-away shops that sell everything from tourist T-shirts to plumbing supplies. With its 25,000 or so residents, Lamu Town lives on as a deep reservoir of Swahili culture, but reflects the influence of people from all over — Indians, Omanis, Persians, Portuguese.

As we meandered through the alleyways, we had to pause in a few places for donkey traffic. In the town center stands a chunky 19th-century Omani fort, which the British turned into a prison not long after they took over. In the fort’s deep shadows we bought fresh coconuts from a guy who deftly chopped off their tops with a machete and stuck in a straw for us to drink. They were so cool, sweet, and delicious that I had two.

We felt safe in the town, and everywhere on Lamu Island. Kenya has suffered terrorist attacks in recent years (though, of course, so have Paris and London), and the American government continues to warn against travel to Lamu. That’s unwarranted, I think. There have been no serious incidents on the island in years. Kenya has beefed up security in the region, and other governments, including the British, exclude Lamu Island from their travel warnings. In fact, tourism has rebounded so successfully in recent years that to stay at Peponi during the winter holidays, it has become standard practice to book at least a year in advance.

We spent the rest of our days hanging out at the beach and doing watersports. Peponi may be in tune with the traditional rhythms of the island, but it also has enough modern equipment — kayaks, paddleboards, windsurfers, and two powerful ski boats — to keep our adolescent boys entertained. And because Lamu sits across a channel from Manda Island, where the airport and a few other resorts are located, there is always a sheltered stretch of water. This makes for perfect waterskiing, and I have to say that clutching a ski rope while whizzing past sail-powered dhows is a thrill that’s hard to replicate elsewhere.

All of this, of course, can leave you hungry, and the food at Peponi is almost reason enough to venture to Lamu. In general, Swahili food is among the continent’s most delicious. It blends all the cultural influences that have shaped the region into one pot, relying heavily on coconut milk, ginger, cardamom, Indian masala spices, and, of course, fresh fish. Peponi’s restaurant has perfected the execution of classic Swahili dishes. Its maharagwe na chapati — red beans soaked in coconut milk, spiced with cilantro and ginger and lapped up with soft chapati — could not be better. We’d typically follow that with ginger crab, linguine with crab, or barbecued reef fish.

Toward the end of our trip we decided to try and catch our own dinner. We hired the charismatic guide Babuu Mohamed for a little help. A fourth-generation Lamu fisherman, Mohamed is nonetheless familiar with all the latest tricks, which include an Instagram account publicizing his services and an app on his phone that shows the depth of the water. Lamu is a fragile ecosystem of mangrove creeks and sand dunes, and Mohamed took us around in a small boat to various spots that his family has been fishing for decades. We eventually hooked a three-foot-long barracuda and a spotted rock grouper and marched victoriously back into Peponi with our catch.

We invited Mohamed to join us for dinner. This, perhaps, is Lamu’s greatest virtue: there isn’t an us-versus-them dynamic between tourists and locals. Even if you are staying at a nice hotel, you feel like you’re living in a village. You hear the happy murmur of kids playing all around you. You get invited to pickup soccer games on the beach. You see the barefoot boat captains in their prayer caps leaning against Peponi’s bar, and you hang out at night — or at least you can — with all of them. That night Mohamed sat with us as we ate the fresh fish with our fingers and we all felt relaxed and satisfied.

“I see why you like this place,” Shalini said a little later. She’s a well-traveled tech executive, but this was her first trip to East Africa and I could tell she was hooked.

We had slipped back out to the veranda, where we watched the moon over the water and the sky smeared with stars. Lamu isn’t just pretty; it’s fascinating. It’s a community that lets you in, even if only briefly. I guess it’s not surprising that I’ve never known anyone to go there only once. I’m hoping to get back at least another 20 times. 

A version of this story first appeared in the October 2023 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline "Star of Africa".