Legendary rallying crew of Shekhar Mehta, navigated by Mike Doughty, are the only competitors in the history of the Safari Rally to have won four consecutive races.
I caught up with the fabled navigator at his retirement bungalow at Fairstare Home for the Old in Nairobi on Wednesday.
His razor-sharp memory, and humour, delivered in Kiswahili, made an immediate impression .
From calling pace notes inside a rally car travelling at 200kph for over a decade, surveying almost the entire habitable parts of Kenya for months to get 5,000km of route for the old, gruelling Safari Rally, Doughty has seen it all.
“Uzee ni ugonjwa. Huwezi kupona , -- age is a sickness. It cannot heal,” drawled Doughty, good-natured, in his famed, measured deep baritone voice that guided Mehta to four straight Safari Rally victories (1979-1982), a feat never achieved before or equalled since.
He also drove with a legion of other great African drivers in European rallies, notably Vic Preston Junior, Mike Kirkland, Basil Criticos, and Jayant Shah.
Doughty slowly straightened his back and stood up grinning from ear to ear to greet my colleague Chris Omollo and I on Wednesday from the verandah of his bungalow at the densely-forested Fairstare Home for the Old in Nairobi’s Rosilyn Estate neighbouring Runda.
His face lit up even more when it was mentioned that the news crew was at his residence to talk about his life in motorsport, and thereafter.
Four-time Safari Rally winner Mike Doughty at his home in Nairobi on October 2, 2024.
Photo credit: Chris Omollo | Nation Media Group
Born 87 years ago, senior citizen Doughty lives alone. He has never married, and has never had children.
He has no relatives in Kenya, but he has kin in Australia and the UK. However, he has no plans of visiting them anytime soon.
“My nephew lives in Brisbane. A niece lives in the middle of South Africa. I am not quite sure the name of the place. Another nephew lives in Sheffield, England and my sister also lives in Sheffield,” he said slowly rubbing his hands from the effects of sunburn.
“I have travelled all over the world and I don’t want to travel any more. I don’t fear flying. But it is a long Safari walking through airports. I don’t like it.”
Doughty, looking good for his age, is the same person I have known for over 30 years, always telling some stories without a lot of drama.
“I visit friends. Some people come here. Oh! I drive myself and the longest distance I have done recently is to Karen but I am planning a Safari to Kilifi. To visit friends like Mike Kirkland. But I will not drive through Mombasa, driving through Mombasa is a nuisance.”
The Safari Rally legend moved to Fairstare recently to spend time under the watchful eyes of caregivers.
“There must be between 30 and 40 wazees. You have to buy your apartment. When I first moved in I was in one of the houses, down there. Eh, then I found out I could not afford it. Then I bought this one instead. Everything is done for you. You pay at the end of the month but very expensive services, a quarter of a million per month, is very expensive. In return you get five stars treatment.”
Fairstare Home for the aged, is a well maintained private property served by a well trained workforce, including care givers.
“It’s a magic place. I no longer have to fix a leaking roof. I no longer have to bother about the water supply anymore. I don’t have to go shopping for food because they provide everything here. They look out for us well here. The average age of the people here is around 85. They’re all very old. It is a very strict routine. Mondays, we do crosswords. But I do more crosswords. On other days I play with my toy curving machine.”
He winds up his day with a mandatory glass of wine and strictly a tot off his favourite drinks -- Famous Grouse or Vodka.
“I follow a similar routine doing my things. Simple,” noted Doughty as he dragged his cigarette, “a very bad habit’’, he said with laughter.
“I read books, novels, biographies, magazines,” he said, his hand going through titles such as The Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania , Fredrick Forsyth’s The Devil Alternative , Pills , Planes , Politics , Trees and Shrubs , Wilbur Smith’s Warlock , Reward and Fairie and a Brief History of Time amongst others.
Doughty leads a solitary life, spending most of the day filling crosswords, a hobby he does rather well.
He then listens to world news all day and is keenly following the United States elections.
He survived the 1998 US Embassy bomb blast which wiped out his hotel business at the Professional Centre near Parliament that served staff of the US Embassy and other foreign missions then located in the Central Business District.
He survived a 180kph car crash with Mehta in a Peugeot 205 Talbot Group B car in the 1987 Pharaoh Desert Raid Egypt, stayed in hospital for two month.
He was then transferred to Nairobi where he helped to organise the Safari Rally, working from a hospital bed.
“I didn't gain from rallying. I earned just a little. When I left I gained a little bit after working for everybody else,” he simply says.
“At Kenton College. I was the chief shamba boy. I had 10 stuff and 10 motor mowers. I used to get to work at about 7 o’clock and as soon as I sat down, a teacher would arrive. ‘Mike help kitu fulani ’. I would fix it. It was fun to see them going back to class to teach the little totos.”
Doughty's last major task in motorsport was at the 1993 London to Sydney Marathon Rally where he was one of the officials collating results and distributing them.
The rally took one month. At the end of the marathon race he asked himself why he couldn't give himself a holiday. He eventually stayed in Australia for another month.
"So when I got back. I said I didn't like this job, So Shekhar, and I went out for dinner one evening at the Professional Centre restaurant. The owner Azhar Chaudthry asked who wanted to buy a restaurant?
"I raised my hand and said, I do."
Just like that Mehta, Mike Somen and Doughty bought the restaurant. At first it was very busy during lunch hour serving staff of the American Embassy until the 1998 Bomb Blast.
"The bombing happened during lunch time. The blast sucked out all the windows. I survived but others did not. My business plummeted after that," recalled Doughty with a tinge of sadness before recovering with laughter.
"That was kazi ngumu sana because in the evening, when everybody was having a party, you had to, as the boss, sit there and watch. Nothing to drink, And that sort of party went late into the night.”
“The real fun was being the General Manager of the WRC Safari Rally Limited. I was paid for a job I would have done for free. You see, after winning the 1982 Safari, I quit navigating and the Safari Rally boss Bharat Bhardwaj pulled me aside and asked me, ‘Mike, I want to give you a job’. I said ‘yes’. Then he said, ‘I will pay you well’, and there I was thinking I would have done it for free."
Doughty made a name for himself as an astute manager. When he started working on the next Safari he looked for routes for over six months, and surveyed them four times, the equivalent of driving 20,000km.”
"The Acropolis Rally in Greece was fun. I navigated Jayanti Shah, Basil Criticos, Vic Preston. I was doing it for fun. I was never paid to drive a Datsun. I have loved rallying since the late 1950s. My father loaned me some money to buy my first car, a Citroen Roho in 1957 soon after leaving Nairobi School. I thought, like all boy racers, that I was the fastest driver in the world."
But after a few rallies he found out that he was not and was, in fact, better at navigating.
He moved to Uganda to work for an agribusiness company where he met Mehta at Kampala Club where they played tennis.
Doughty singled out their 1979 first Safari victory as the most important of his career.
The following year Doughty joined Mehta but they suffered a streak of bad luck until 1979 when Datsun Team boss Takashi Wakabayashi threatened to detach them from the car.
"So in 1979 we did recce four times and agreed at the start that he will be leaving the team in style as the fastest losers when we retire. So we carried only two spare wheels and drove like hell."
“It was an incredible car, an incredible team of mechanics, an specially made car. They could do anything quicker than anybody. In '79 we arrived at a control point and told Wakabayashi we had four minutes. We replaced the entire rear axle in 11 minutes.
"We continued happily with a new axle. It was a good secret because Mercedes, who had fielded the sleek 350 SLC which was faster than the Datsun, was spending 30 minutes doing the same job."
Shekhar Mehta and Mike Doughty blast away in Emali in a Datsun 160J during the 1979 Safari Rally.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Doughty said the 1979 victory was their sweetest and he remembers the finishing at the KICC where Wakabayashi and Mehta's wife Vyonne joined them at the finish for celebrations.
This is the only rally picture on Doughty's walls, adorned with paintings of birds.
His best car remains the Datsun 240Z. "The 240Z was the ultimate boy’s toy. What a magic toy that was,” Doughty says, a wide smile splitting his face.
“The 160J Datsun was just a car. But the 240Z !, magic, magic car."
"In rallying circles we were celebrities. Away from rallying we were ordinary people," he says.
“I was born in Tanga, Tanzania. My dad was a geneticist, doing research on maize, cassava, sisal. He is one of the main people who developed the mahindi we eat today with long ears. Doesn’t suffer from brown disease. My mum, just a housewife. Lesley Roy... Wife? I don’t have a wife. I am not gonna tell you because you are recording.”
The family moved to Eldoret “ in 1948, I suppose” says Doughty before he left home in 1957 and somehow settled in Nairobi in 1969.
“I have never driven a Formula One racing car. Oh, I have never flown an autogyro which I would like to do. Even in old age. I used to be a pilot. Just a private pilot, I would like a chance to drive a Formula One car to feel what real power is. I would like to jump out of the plane in a parachute.”
Whether delivered in jest or not, Doughty is a good story teller, and a damn good co-driver .
