Nairobi6 min read
Upper Hill, Westlands or Kilimani: where to base yourself in Nairobi
Four neighbourhoods, what each is for, and the honest trade-offs. In a city where a short journey can take an hour, this is the decision that matters most.
We let an apartment in Upper Hill, so the conclusion will not surprise you. The reasoning is still worth setting out honestly, because for a good number of visitors the right answer is somewhere else, and a fortnight in the wrong neighbourhood is a fortnight spent in traffic.
The rule underneath all of it: in Nairobi, choose the neighbourhood you need to be in daily, not the one that looks nicest. Journeys you never make cost nothing.
Upper Hill
A working ridge south-west of the centre. Bank head offices, insurers, regional bodies, and the hospital cluster — Nairobi Hospital, Kenyatta National Hospital and the specialist clinics around them.
- Right for: anyone whose meetings are in the business district, and anyone attending or accompanying treatment. Also good for a long stay, being quiet after dark.
- Wrong for: a first-time visitor here to see the city. There is little nightlife and you will be ordering cars to eat out.
We wrote about it in more depth in where to stay in Upper Hill.
Westlands
Nairobi’s commercial and social centre of gravity. Malls, most of the best restaurants, the busiest nightlife, a good deal of the tech and NGO sector, and a growing cluster of towers.
- Right for: visitors who want a city rather than a base. Also the obvious choice if your work is in tech, media or development.
- Wrong for: anyone commuting daily to Upper Hill or the CBD. It is not far, and it is a genuinely miserable journey twice a day.
Kilimani
Between the two, and increasingly the default for people staying a while: residential, leafy in parts, dense with apartment blocks, cafés and small restaurants. Sits within reach of both Upper Hill and Westlands without being either.
- Right for: a longer stay where your days are not anchored to one address. Good value.
- Wrong for: anyone who needs to walk to a specific building. “Ten minutes from Upper Hill” is true at ten in the morning and a fiction at eight.
Karen and the suburbs
Green, spacious and genuinely lovely, some way south-west of everything. Large houses, gardens, horses, and the attractions most visitors want to see — the giraffe centre, the elephant orphanage, the Blixen museum.
- Right for: families, longer leisure stays, and anyone with a car and no daily commitments in town.
- Wrong for: business trips. It is forty-five minutes to Upper Hill in traffic and you will resent every one of them.
A useful test: write down the address you will visit most often, then pick somewhere you could reach it on foot. If that is impossible, pick somewhere you could reach it against the traffic rather than with it.
The one thing that beats neighbourhood
The building. Backup power, water storage, working lifts, 24-hour security — these matter more day to day than which district you are in, and they vary enormously within every neighbourhood on this list. A beautiful apartment in a building without a generator is a beautiful apartment with no internet for the afternoon.
Ask about those four before you look at the photographs. Most listings will not mention them, which is itself informative.