Chyulu Hills in Makueni County, Kenya, was ranked among the top 50 places to visit worldwide in 2023 by Times Magazine.
The hills were named, among other sites, including the Northern Lights in Canada, Musanze in Rwanda, Budapest, Yosemite National Park, Giza and Saqqara in Egypt, the red sea in Saudi Arabia, Guadalajara in Mexico, and Isan in Thailand, among others.
Chyulu Hills is home to large mammals, including buffalo, bushbucks, elands, elephants, leopards, giant forest hogs, bush pigs, reedbucks, and giraffes, as well as reptiles and insects.
Visitors' activities include horse riding, camping, mountain climbing, and bird watching.
Referred to as the Green Hills of Africa, citizens, and resident adults pay Ksh300 as an entry fee, while children are charged Ksh125. On the other hand, non-resident tourists pay Ksh2,860 (USD 22) for adults and Ksh1,700 (USD 13) for kids.
However, visitors are informed that there may be additional charges depending on activities at the park.
Meanwhile, the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) can be seen in Churchill, Canada, up to 300 nights a year. The northern lights are an atmospheric phenomenon that mimics dancing waves of light.
They are caused by electrically charged particles from space entering Earth's upper atmosphere at high speed. These particles are majorly from the sun.
When they penetrate the earth's atmosphere, they are taken toward the earth's magnetic North and South poles. They then hit atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, causing them to be 'excited'.
This reaction creates two glowing rings of auroral emissions around the poles, but as they decay back to their initial state, they emit conspicuous colour of light referred to as the Northern Lights.
Due to different atoms in the earth's atmosphere, like oxygen and nitrogen, the Northern Lights have different colours, including green, red, and purple.
“We sometimes see a wonderful scarlet red colour, and this is caused by very high altitude oxygen interacting with solar particles,” explained Royal Observatory astronomer Tom Kerss in a past interview.
