Samburu

It is difficult not to agree once you have seen elephants in the wild, or indeed any of the great animals of the African plains. We have visited a number of the reserves in Kenya from the well known Masai Mara and Tsavo to lesser known parks such as Shimba Hills, home to the rare Sable Antelope, Lake Naivasha with its vast flocks of flamingoes, Taita Hills and the Aberdares.

Although one of the more spectacular is Amboseli, which is dominated by fantastic views of Mount Kilimanjaro, our favourite is Samburu in what used to be called the Northern Frontier District. It is a vast area of desert and semi-desert that stretches from Mount Kenya to the Sudan and Ethiopia. Samburu is home to some on the less common Kenyan wildlife such as the reticulated giraffe, Grevy’s zebra, oryx and gerenuk, a type of antelope that has a peculiar long neck to allow it to eat the new leaves and buds that other antelope cannot reach.

The journey there is an adventure, passing across the equator at Nanyuki, under the eternal snows of Mount Kenya (we used to stay at the Mount Kenya Safari Club where you still dress for dinner and it is cool enough for log fires in the bungalows) and leaving the proper road at Archer’s Post, a name that conjures up frontier images. This area can be dangerous with bands of well armed men having strayed from the troubles in Sudan and Ethiopia; one time we had to outrun an old pickup with half a dozen Kalashnikov bearing men that passed in the opposite direction, did a sudden U-turn and raced back towards us along the laterite road in a cloud of red dust; we didn’t stop to exchange pleasantries.