Kenya's Treetops hotel reopens after Covid shutdown

Nairobi: Kenya s renowned Treetops hotel, where Britain s then Princess Elizabeth was staying when she became queen, has reopened its doors after clos...

Nairobi: Kenya's renowned Treetops hotel, where Britain's then Princess Elizabeth was staying when she became queen, has reopened its doors after closing down during the Covid pandemic.

First opened in 1932 as an overnight stay for wealthy and intrepid visitors, Treetops Lodge overlooks a watering hole in the Aberdares National Park, about a three-hour drive from the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

It shut down in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic that devastated tourism in Kenya and across the world.

Elizabeth, then 25, was staying at Treetops in February 1952 with her husband Prince Philip on a visit to the then British colony, the first stop of a tour of the Commonwealth, when her father King George VI died of lung cancer.

Two years after the historic visit to Kenya, with Elizabeth having assumed the throne, Treetops burned down in what was rumoured to be an arson attack by anti-colonial Mau Mau rebels.