Trips Around Kenya’s National Parks
Kenya has much to offer the traveler, with a whole range of spectacular and varied landscapes to be explored.
Along the eastern edge of the Rift Valley, for example, there lies a range of volcanic mountains approximately one hundred kilometers long. These mountains, the Aberdares, link Thomsons Falls and Nairobi, and rise magnificent isolation, with forests and moorland clinging to the slopes within the National Park set up in the 1950s. This is a site off the usual tourist safari trails, but those intrepid travelers who do make it here will be rewarded with views of all the major species (rhinos, elephants, leopards and lions) as well as getting the chance to look for the graceful bongo antelope that hides in these mountains. The rich volcanic soil is a bright red color. Many streams run through the landscape, cascading over in spectacular waterfalls. The two main peaks reach almost four thousand meters in height, and are linked by moorland that lies at over three thousand meters. There is heavy rainfall, which can turn the roads to river of mud, and the park often closes completely during the rainy season. Visitors will need a sturdy vehicle to get around, at any time of the year.
The National Reserve at Shaba is named after the local mountain of the same name, which is a massive extinct volcano. This area is famous for its connection with the author, Joy Adamson whose much loved books tell the story of the leopards she raised and released here. Unfortunately, her trilogy of books was left unfinished when Joy died, but the leopards of Shaba live on as her legacy to the world. There are three game sanctuaries in the area, which rests to the east of the route between Marsabit and Isiolo.
Another extinct volcano, Mount Kenya, dominates the region known as the Kenyan Highlands. To the west lies the Rift Valley, while Nairobi is a hundred and forty kilometers away in the South West. There are two peaks to the mountain, Neilon and Batian, both over five thousand meters. A wide range of vegetation cover the slopes of the mountain, including bamboo, moorland, scrub and forest, with ice, snow and rock covering the highest points. There are also marshlands and wide fields of grass, as well as outcrops and cliffs of bare rock. There are woods of acacia and Euphorbia forest covering rocky hillsides. One of the most beautiful scenes is that of the Lake of Nakuru, which is a large but shallow lake sitting among waving grasses and flourishing woods, near the town of Nakuru. Water from the region of Mount Kenya feeds the rivers of the North Ewaso Ngiro and Tana.
Most tourists who visit Kenya will spend some, if not all of their trip, at the Masai Mara Reserve. Sometimes it can seem that there are more people here than animals, but it is clear to see why they come when you look out at the natural beauty of the area, or spot some of the most spectacular wildlife in the world. Tanzania’s Serengeti Park covers a huge area that contains the richest concentration of wildlife in Africa. If you are chasing a sighting of the Big 5 species, the rhino, elephant, buffalo, leopard and lion, then this is the place to catch them. In the months of May and June there is a massive influx of wildebeest and other species, including zebra, buffalo, eland and giraffe, followed by predatory animals including the hyena and vulture. Many other creatures can be seen here too, such as monkeys, baboon, hippos and impala, as well as more than five hundred species of bird. One great way to grasp the hugeness of the migration is to take a tour overhead in a hot air balloon.
