Kenyan Views is a travel-and-lifestyle blog started by a young man, Akshay Tailor, who wanted to share his experiences and passion for photography as he travelled with his parents. The page, which began in 2018 and now has 15.6 thousand followers, has attracted and captured the attention of people around the world with its unique take on shared experiences. Whether its food, concerts, or nature, you’re sure to find something that you can connect with on Kenyan Views.
To Akshay, the page has been a source of energy and a platform upon which to connect with other people and seek the betterment of the self. Nothing makes him happier than the connection his page manages to foster with strangers. His eyes light up, his smile broadens, and, as he shares the stories of his interactions with people on the page, you realize that this page gives him and his followers what we all we crave—an unadulterated lens through which to view the often obscured beauty of the world.
One story illustrates this completely. One day, while out with a friend, Akshay accessed the Kenyan Views page. His friend, unaware that Akshay was the admin of the page, asked him how he had access to the page. The friend even wondered whether Akshay had hacked the page. This story is a testament to the necessity of Kenyan Views; to show people that beauty can come from anywhere.
This, I feel, is what makes it easy for people to connect with Akshay and Kenyan Views; this idealistic and infectious idea that, if you look for the beauty of life, then it will reveal itself to you.
Once you experience it, it’s easy to understand why artists such as Diplo, Major Lazer, Walshy Fire, Momomo Youth, and Atif Aslam considered Kenyan Views a page whose content they could feature on their stories. After all, like Akshay, they’re all seekers of truth through art. It’s also easy to understand why companies, hotels, national parks like Ol Pejeta and Nairobi National Park, and even Magical Kenya, the tourism board of Kenya, have interacted with, followed, and featured content from the page. To Akshay, this was a big honour. To him, there was no better feeling than having an authority on the beauty of a country validate his quest to reveal it.
The current goal of Kenyan Views, in Akshay’s words, “is to become the place people look to for content, inspiration, and a platform because social media is steadily becoming today’s search engine.” Whether he’s featuring the work of professional or amateur photographers, he wants to help people see through each other’s eyes and grow because of it. To make this happen, he focuses on creating a relationship of trust with Kenyan Views’ audience and seeking out the hidden gems that need to be brought to the light. So, whether it’s a five-star hotel or a little restaurant in Migori that serves fish fresh from Lake Victoria, he believes that every place and every person should have equal opportunity to shine.
Regardless of this, as a self-proclaimed foodie, the Kenyan culinary scene is a significant centre-point for Akshay. His honourable mentions include restaurants such as the Pallet Café, whose dedication to the empowerment of the differently-abled moved him, and the Geco café, whose interior wowed him. He believes that food, like art, is an expression of the self and that, having experienced it, he leaves each place he visits a little better than when he walked in.
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