Nairobi5 min read
Getting around Nairobi: taxis, ride-hailing and the traffic
How people actually move around Nairobi, what each option costs you in time rather than money, and why the hour of the day matters more than the distance.
Nairobi is not a difficult city to move around. It is a difficult city to move around at four in the afternoon. Understanding that distinction is most of what a visitor needs.
Ride-hailing is the default
Uber and Bolt both operate across the city, and between them they are how most people with a smartphone travel. Fares are low by the standards of almost any visitor, coverage is good, and the trip is logged — which is also the security argument.
Two practical notes. Prices surge in the rain, which in Nairobi means most afternoons between March and May. And drivers will sometimes call to confirm where you are, so a working local number is worth having before you start ordering cars.
Taxis and hiring a driver
- Ranked taxis outside hotels and the airport charge more and negotiate the fare up front. Useful when you have no data.
- Hiring a driver for the day is common, straightforward and often better value than four separate trips plus waiting. For a day out of the city it is the sensible option. Ask wherever you are staying rather than finding one online — a personal recommendation is worth more than a rating.
Matatus and boda-bodas
Matatus — the painted minibuses — are the backbone of the city and cost almost nothing. They are also crowded, route-obscure, and not really aimed at somebody who does not already know where they are going. Worth doing once with someone who does; not worth relying on.
Boda-bodas, the motorcycle taxis, cut through traffic in a way nothing else can, and that is exactly the problem. They are the fastest way across town and by a wide margin the most dangerous. If you take one, insist on a helmet.
Plan by clock, not by map. Anything between about seven and nine-thirty in the morning, or four and seven in the evening, will take two to three times what the distance suggests. A meeting across town at five is a different proposition from the same meeting at eleven.
Walking
Within a neighbourhood, walking is normal and often the fastest thing you can do. Upper Hill is well suited to it: short distances, reasonable pavements, and most of what a visiting professional or a hospital visitor needs inside a fifteen-minute radius.
Between neighbourhoods it is generally not practical — the roads are built for cars and the gaps between districts are long. This is the single strongest argument for choosing your neighbourhood carefully: the journeys you never have to make are the ones that cost nothing.
The Expressway
The Nairobi Expressway runs above Mombasa Road from the airport, past Upper Hill, and out towards Westlands. It is tolled and it is worth it. For the airport run in particular it has changed the arithmetic — the detail is in getting from JKIA to Upper Hill.