A Park for Every Traveller
It is said you can’t please everyone, but Kenya’s national parks come remarkably close. You might watch lions stalking across open savannah one day and antelope slipping through cool rainforest the next, find baboons and birds filling a tropical forest, or swim with dolphins in a marine park. Endangered rhinos, big cats, great herds of elephants and vast flocks of birds are all part of the picture.
The great safari parks
Nairobi National Park puts lion, leopard, buffalo and giraffe within sight of the city skyline, just minutes from the centre. The Masai Mara National Reserve has one of the highest concentrations of lions in the region and hosts the Great Migration, when up to two million wildebeest, zebra and gazelle move through the ecosystem each year, on land where the Maasai still herd their cattle.
Tsavo East and Tsavo West are Kenya’s largest parks and hold all of the Big Five, including large elephant herds. Samburu is home to close to a thousand elephants, the Samburu people, unusual northern species and African wild dogs. Amboseli, framed by Mount Kilimanjaro to the south, has so many elephants that sightings are almost certain, while Lake Nakuru offers excellent chances of black rhino in its protected sanctuary, along with flocks of flamingos. At Ol Pejeta, rhinos are guarded from poaching, and its chimpanzee sanctuary is the only place in Kenya to see chimps.
Coast, forest and mountains
On the coast, Kisite Mpunguti Marine National Park offers snorkelling and diving with dolphins and turtles on a vast coral reef. Watamu Marine National Park has bright lagoons and coral gardens with sea turtles, manta rays and hundreds of fish, and Malindi Marine National Park, among the first marine parks in Africa, protects fringing reefs rich in turtles, dolphins, fish and shorebirds.
Inland, Aberdare National Park is a world of waterfalls, cool mountain air, clear streams and thick rainforest, quite unlike the typical image of an African park. For something different again, hike the extinct volcano of Mount Longonot, or climb among the glaciers and mountain lakes of Mount Kenya, the second highest mountain in Africa.
The overlooked ones
With so many parks to choose from, some of the quieter reserves are easy to miss, yet they are full of wildlife and almost empty of other visitors. Meru National Park is one of them, a wild and beautiful place of forest, rivers and rolling green hills, and the park where Joy Adamson released Elsa the lioness, the story told in Born Free.
National Park
