Photo: Jeffmugendi (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio tour of the Gede Ruins near Watamu and then the town of Malindi to the north, each a short walk from the car. At the entrance it tells the story of Gede, a walled Swahili stone town in the forest that grew from around the twelfth century and prospered in the fifteenth on the Indian Ocean trade, its destruction and abandonment in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and its recording by Sir John Kirk in 1884 and excavation by James Kirkman from 1948 to 1958. In the ruins it visits the Dated Tomb, whose inscription gives the year 1399, the Great Mosque of the fifteenth century, the Palace, and the stone houses the excavators named after what they found inside them. In Malindi it visits the museum in the old Imperial British East Africa Company office of the early 1890s, the House of Columns, built as an Indian trading house, and the small Portuguese Chapel, and ends at the pillar the Portuguese raised after Vasco da Gama reached Malindi in 1498.
8 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 5 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
The way into Gede, a walled Swahili stone town that prospered in the fifteenth century and was left in the seventeenth.
Gede's Friday mosque of the middle of the fifteenth century, reached past the Dated Tomb, whose inscription gives the year 1399.
A great complex of courts behind an arched entrance, read as the Sultan of Malindi's palace or as the house of a wealthy family.
The stone houses the excavators named for what they found inside: the Venetian Bead, the Iron Lamp, the Scissors, the Chinese Cash.
The small chapel the Portuguese left in Malindi after Vasco da Gama, built in the style of the Navigator's chapel at Sagres.
The Portuguese padrão on its rocky headland, raised with the permission of Malindi's ruler after da Gama arrived in 1498.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 8 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 8 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Gede Ruins and Old Malindi, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
8 narration points, including Gede Museum and Entrance, Great Mosque, The Palace of Gede, Malindi Museum and Portuguese Chapel. That is about 8 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 8 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.