Filming locations in Kenya

Visiting Kenya: a set-jetting guide. The rolling highlands and savannah at the foot of the Ngong Hills, just outside Nairobi, are the heart of Out of Africa, Sydney Pollack's sweeping 1985 romance of a Danish coffee farmer and her doomed love affair with a free-roaming hunter. The film won a shelf of Oscars on the strength of this scenery, and the real country behind it remains close enough to the screen version to make the trip feel like stepping into the picture.

The Ngong Hills are the film's emotional horizon, the long green ridgeline where Denys is finally laid to rest above the plains. Walking the tops today is a breezy, beautiful thing, usually done with a local guide or ranger for safety, and best in the early morning before the haze rises over the city below. Wind turbines now line part of the crest, a modern note in a view that otherwise feels timeless.

Down at the foot of the hills sits the second pilgrimage, the Karen Blixen Museum, the author's own farmhouse and the real home behind the story. It is a ticketed museum in the leafy Nairobi suburb of Karen, which takes its name from her, with guided tours of the house and its gardens that take about an hour. Seeing the rooms where she lived gives the romance its grounding in a real, ordinary life.

The two spots are close together and easy to chain in a single day from Nairobi, the museum about half an hour from the centre and the hills a short drive on. It is worth weaving in the wildlife, too: Nairobi National Park lies on the way back to the city, and the Giraffe Centre is a short drive from the museum. Go in the morning for the clearest air and the gentlest light, and you will have the country at its most cinematic.