10 Day Kenya In Depth Safari

North out of Nairobi past the flanks of Mount Kenya, roughly 325 kilometres and five to six hours, with a stop at the equator crossing near Nanyuki. The country changes as you go, cultivated highland giving way to the dry acacia scrub and red earth of the north. Samburu covers about 165 square kilometres along the Ewaso Ng’iro River, which is the lifeline of the reserve and draws wildlife to its banks even in the driest months. We take you in for an afternoon game drive along the river, where doum palms line the banks and elephant come down to drink. Crocodile lie on the sandbars. This is a harsher, redder country than anything further south, and it feels immediately different from the Kenya most visitors picture. Samburu sits at around 900 metres, considerably lower and hotter than the highlands you drove through, so the afternoon drive is the cooler end of the day.

A full day working the reserve for the Samburu Special Five, a set of dry country species largely confined to northern Kenya. Grevy’s zebra, the largest wild equid on earth, with narrow stripes, rounded ears and a white belly, and fewer than three thousand left in the wild. Reticulated giraffe, with a coat of sharp edged chestnut polygons separated by clean white lines. Beisa oryx in the open scrub, horns approaching a metre. Gerenuk, the giraffe gazelle, which stands upright on its hind legs to browse. And Somali ostrich, the male carrying blue grey neck and legs rather than pink. None of these occur in the Mara or Amboseli. Alongside them: elephant, lion, leopard, cheetah, buffalo and over 450 recorded bird species. There are no rhino here. For those you would look to the Lewa and Sera conservancies nearby, which we can add if the Big Five matters to you.

An early game drive along the river before we leave, then south and west back past Mount Kenya and down onto the Rift Valley floor, roughly six hours with a lunch stop. Nakuru covers about 188 square kilometres around a shallow alkaline lake and forms part of the UNESCO listed Kenya Lake System of the Great Rift Valley. We take an afternoon game drive in the southern sector, the best rhino ground in the park. Southern white rhino graze in the open in family groups, largely indifferent to vehicles, while eastern black rhino browse in thicker cover and are considerably harder to find. Rothschild’s giraffe work the acacia belt on the eastern shore, moved here from western Kenya when their home range was being converted to farmland. Nakuru has no elephant, so this is a four of the Big Five park, and the Mara later in the trip fills that gap.

A morning game drive first, taking in Baboon Cliff on the western escarpment for the view across the whole lake and out over the valley floor, and giving the rhino a second chance in the best light. A word on the flamingos while we are here: Nakuru was once famous for a million of them, and rising water across the Rift lakes has diluted the alkalinity, thinned the algae they feed on and pushed most of them elsewhere. Numbers vary, so treat them as a bonus. Then south to Lake Naivasha, only about an hour and a half, and a completely different lake: freshwater at around 1,880 metres, ringed with fever tree woodland and papyrus. A late afternoon boat takes you out among the hippo pods, with fish eagles working the shoreline. Ask the boatman to call one down; they know exactly which birds respond. Pelicans and cormorants work the water and hippo grunt in the shallows through the evening.

A day on foot and on two wheels, which is rare in Kenya and lands well halfway through a long trip. We start at Crescent Island, a private walking area on the lake with no dangerous predators, where you walk without a vehicle among giraffe, zebra, waterbuck, eland and impala. Being at ground level with a giraffe rather than looking up from a seat changes the scale of everything. Afterwards, Hell’s Gate National Park, one of very few Kenyan parks where cycling is permitted among wildlife: you ride between towering red cliffs past Fischer’s Tower with zebra and buffalo grazing beside the track, then walk down into the gorge with a local guide, through narrow sandstone passages carved by hot springs. Back to Naivasha in the late afternoon. Elsamere, the former home of Joy Adamson, is the alternative if you would rather not cycle, and the colobus in its lakeshore gardens are easy to see.

Southwest through Narok and out onto the plains, roughly four to five hours, with the country opening up as you drop towards the reserve. We reach the Mara in the early afternoon for a first game drive on the way to your camp. The reserve covers about 1,510 square kilometres of rolling grassland and is managed by Narok County rather than Kenya Wildlife Service, which is why it is technically a national reserve rather than a national park. The word Mara means spotted in Maa, a reference to the scattered acacia, scrub and cloud shadow dotting the plains, and once you know that you cannot unsee it. Dinner at camp on the edge of the reserve. Around 2,400 elephants live across the greater ecosystem, alongside buffalo, giraffe, topi, eland and hippo. Black rhino exist here but are scarce and heavily protected, so the Big Five is achievable rather than routine. Dinner at camp, with tomorrow planned around the most recent sightings.

Out at first light with a picnic lunch. The Mara’s real strength is its resident predator population, present in every month regardless of the migration. Something in the order of 850 lions live across the greater Mara, and the open country makes them far easier to find than in wooded parks. Cheetah do well on these plains and are seen more reliably here than almost anywhere in East Africa, while leopard work the riverine forest along the Mara and Talek rivers. We spend the day in the Mara Triangle in the west where possible, a wedge of around 510 square kilometres between the river and the Oloololo Escarpment, managed separately, better run and considerably quieter than the eastern reserve. Rules are properly enforced there and you will not join a queue of twenty vehicles at a leopard, which east of the river in high season is a real possibility. We take a picnic lunch out on the plains rather than returning to camp.

The day that makes a Mara stay worth booking properly. Two full days means you can wait: at a river bank in crossing season, at a kill, or with a cheetah that looks like it might hunt. From July to October the herds are here, around 1.5 million wildebeest with several hundred thousand zebra and Thomson’s gazelle, and the Mara River crossings are what everybody comes for. Nobody can predict one; herds pile up on the banks for hours and then simply walk away. Outside those months the resident cats are the draw and the reserve is far quieter. Over 470 bird species have been recorded across the ecosystem, with six vulture species and a strong raptor list worth stopping for. Migrants arrive from November through April, which coincides with the green low season and gives the strongest bird lists of the year, and the green plains photograph far better than dry season dust.

A dawn game drive first, then back to camp for breakfast before the transfer to the airstrip. The scheduled flight to Wilson Airport in Nairobi takes about forty five minutes, with a connection on to Amboseli, and the whole transfer is done by early afternoon; driving the same route would cost most of a day. Amboseli covers 392 square kilometres in Kajiado County on the Tanzanian border, and we take you out as soon as you land. Around 1,800 elephants live here, followed continuously since the early 1970s in the longest running study of wild elephants anywhere, which is why some of the last great tuskers in Africa are found in this park. Late afternoon is one of the two windows when Kilimanjaro is usually clear. Through the middle of the day the summit hides in cloud, and visitors who arrive at noon often leave believing the mountain is a marketing invention.

Out before sunrise for the last drive of the trip, and the one people plan around. Kilimanjaro rises to 5,895 metres about seventy kilometres south in Tanzania, and the reliable windows are the first hour after dawn and the last before dark, so being out early is not optional here the way it might be elsewhere. Elephants crossing the dry lakebed in low sun with the mountain behind them is the single most reproduced image in East African safari photography, and this is the only place it can be taken. We work the swamps at Enkongo Narok and Longinye, then back for breakfast and the road north to Nairobi, roughly four to five hours. Drop off at your hotel or the airport. If your international flight is the following morning we will book you a final night in Nairobi rather than leaving you waiting at the airport for hours.