Riccardo has had such a varied career before he founded Saruni Camps (Saruni Mara, Wild, Samburu & Rhino) in Kenya that we are sure we could record several podcasts but here we have a few of his tales of his life in Kenya.
Born in Italy in 1961, Riccardo Orizio is a reporter, author, safari guide and conservationist. As a foreign correspondent for the Italian daily newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, for the magazines Il Mondo, Fortune and Epoca, and then for CNN, in his “first life” Riccardo has covered war, peace and some of what happens in between. Since 2003, he lives in Kenya, surrounded by wildlife and dramatic landscapes, where he co-owns and manages four deluxe safari camps: Saruni Mara, Saruni Wild, Saruni Samburu and Saruni Rhino (see www.saruni.com) .
His first book, "Lost White Tribes - Journeys among the Forgotten", was published in London in 2000, followed by Dutch, Italian, American and Turkish editions. His second book, based on interviews with deposed and disgraced dictators, is titled “Talk of the Devil” and has been published in 2002 and 2003 in several countries, including Italy, Usa, Great Britain, Japan, Holland, Spain. He’s writing more books about his main interest: unusual places, unusual people, unusual stories.
He is happily married to Elizabeth, who is English but often more Italian than him.
They own and love an olive oil farm in Maremma, a place that is the Italian equivalent of the places that appear in Riccardo’s book: rough, different, authentic, often forgotten, full of troubled history and a magical present. Quite different from its famous neighbor in Tuscany, the so-called Chiantishire. The farm house is nicknamed Casa Pumba. Pumba is the warthog in Swahili: in Italian is called cinghiale.