We flew to Nairobi to look at one lodge

A flight for one room

The photographs were the reason we got on the plane. By the middle of the afternoon the lodge was off the list, and the pictures had not changed. What changed was standing in the room they do not put in the brochure.

A beautiful frame is cheap. The tell is usually smaller: a path that staff are clearly tired of walking, a view that only exists from the camera mark, a manager who cannot say who was in the next room last week.

We had come to add it. We left having taken it off. The flight was worth it for that sentence alone, because a picture would have kept it on the list for another year.

What gave it away

We do not publish a score. We either keep a place or we do not. This one photographed like a place we would send someone. It did not feel like one once we were in it, and that is the only test that counts.

The list stays short because afternoons like this one are allowed to end in a no. A beautiful photograph is not a reason to send someone else to stand where we did not want to stay.