Hell’s Gate National Park

The Park You Explore on Foot

Hell’s Gate is small — around 68 square kilometres south of Lake Naivasha — and it is one of the very few parks in Kenya where you are permitted to walk and cycle unescorted. There are no elephant and no resident lion, and that absence is precisely what makes the freedom possible. The result is a park you experience at ground level rather than through a vehicle window.

The landscape does the heavy lifting. Sheer red cliffs frame a broad valley, Fischer’s Tower and Central Tower rise as isolated volcanic plugs, and the Ol Njorowa Gorge cuts a narrow slot through the rock with hot springs seeping from its walls. Steam from the Olkaria geothermal plant drifts across the valley, a reminder of how active the ground still is. The park was gazetted in 1984, named after a narrow break in the cliffs.

Wildlife is plentiful if not dramatic: zebra, buffalo, eland, Thomson’s gazelle, warthog, baboon and klipspringer, with Rüppell’s vultures, Verreaux’s eagles and augur buzzards nesting on the cliffs. Rock climbers come for Fischer’s Tower, and the valley’s scenery is widely held to have inspired animated film backdrops.