Walk Nairobi and light up what you actually covered

FOG hides the whole world map under fog. Every street you physically walk is revealed and stays revealed. It runs in the background, and nothing leaves the phone.

A grid, then corridors

Nairobi sits at about 1,800 metres, so the air is thin and cool and the sun is sharper than the temperature suggests. Walking here splits into two very different experiences. The central business district is a compact grid you can cover on foot: Kenyatta Avenue, Moi Avenue, Tom Mboya Street, Kimathi Street and Koinange Street cross each other in short blocks, with the City Market and Jeevanjee Gardens sitting inside it.

Everywhere else is a corridor city. Ngong Road, Waiyaki Way, Thika Road and Uhuru Highway carry the traffic, and the neighbourhoods hang off them. Westlands, Kilimani, Parklands, Lavington and Karen are all reachable but they are strung along roads rather than joined by a network of small streets.

A route that works on foot

Start at the Railway Museum and walk up into the CBD grid. Do Kimathi and Kenyatta Avenue, cut through to Muindi Mbingu Street and the market, then sit for a minute in Jeevanjee Gardens. Head west, cross Uhuru Highway at the footbridge, and walk the length of Central Park and Uhuru Park along the water. From there you can climb State House Road toward the Arboretum, which has a couple of kilometres of shaded paths under old trees.

The other option is a morning in Karura Forest. It is a forest inside the city with a marked path network, a waterfall and caves, and it is one of the few places in Nairobi where you can walk for two hours without meeting a road.

Be honest about the walking

Outside the centre, Nairobi is a car city and it does not pretend otherwise. Pavements start and stop, matatus use the shoulder, and crossing a dual carriageway can mean walking several hundred metres to a footbridge. That shapes your map. The CBD fills in as a dense block quickly and looks great. Beyond it you get long thin lines, one road at a time, because the road is the only continuous thing there is.

Weather matters too. The long rains around March to May and the short rains around October to December turn unpaved shoulders into mud, and a downpour here is heavy and short. The dry months are the ones where you cover ground. Altitude is worth respecting on the first few days if you have arrived from sea level.

What the app does

FOG is a fog of war walking map. The entire world map starts under fog and only the streets you have physically walked are revealed. They stay revealed. Background exploring keeps working with the app closed and the screen off, so a walk to the matatu stage still counts.

Free to explore. A single purchase of USD 5.99 unlocks unlimited ranks, every character and history import, and there is never a subscription. Ranks climb with the area you have covered: Wanderer, Scout, Pathfinder, Explorer, Voyager. City percent shows how much of Nairobi you have lit. The collection covers 241 countries, 3,390 regions and 7,342 named places, and you only get them by standing in them.

No account, no sign-up, no cloud, no analytics, no ads, no tracking. The map never leaves the phone and you can export your own data.

Questions people actually ask

Start with a dark map.

FOG is free to explore. No account, no subscription, and your map never leaves your phone.

free to explore · one purchase unlocks everything · never a subscription