Samburu National Reserve

Deep in Northern Kenya, where the landscape turns rust-red and the Ewaso Ng'iro river cuts through dry thornbush, five of the rarest animals on the continent roam freely here, and this is the only place in Kenya where you can find them all. The Samburu National Reserve is located on the banks of the Ewaso Ng’iro river in Kenya; on the other side of the river is the Buffalo Springs National Reserve and is 165 km² in size and 350 kilometers from Nairobi.

The Ewaso Ng'iro, meaning "brown water" in the local tongue, is the beating heart of Samburu, a wide, unhurried river fringed with acacia, doum palms and tamarind trees that draws extraordinary wildlife to its banks in numbers that will leave you speechless. Elephants wade into the shallows for relief from the heat, crocodiles lie motionless on sun-baked rocks, and the long-necked Gerenuk, Grevy's Zebra and Reticulated Giraffe move through the riverine forest with a quiet, unhurried grace. 

Samburu National Reserve carries a story that goes far deeper than wildlife sightings. This is where George and Joy Adamson raised Elsa the Lioness, immortalised in the bestselling book and award-winning film 'Born Free', and where Kamunyak, a wild lioness who baffled the world by repeatedly adopting newborn Beisa Oryx calves rather than eating them, roamed freely. These are not footnotes in Samburu's history, they are the soul of a place where the wild has always had the power to surprise you.

Drive through the Ngare Mare or Buffalo Springs gates and two mountains rise immediately into view; Koitogor and the flat-topped Ololokwe, ancient sentinels framing the reserve's wild skyline. What strikes most visitors immediately is the silence, a deep, unhurried serenity that comes from being genuinely far from highways, cities and the well-worn southern safari circuit, in a landscape so remote and so untouched it feels as though very little here has changed in centuries.