An Epic Kenya Safari: Part 1

I’m excited to share our recent trip: an epic safari in Kenya! This was our second safari; but two years ago, in Botswana, we saw, experienced, and learned so much that when we got home I couldn’t get my head around sharing it. This time, I’m ready. So let’s jump in!

We were traveling with Pangolin Photo Safaris; we loved our trip with them in 2024 and knew we’d be in good hands. We had stays in Amboseli, Samburu, and the Masai Mara, followed by a few days on our own at Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

Amboseli

Our first destination was Amboseli National Park. From the regional airport in Nairobi, we took a Twin Otter (18-seat propellor plane) to the dirt airstrip at the park, where we were met by our guides with Land Cruisers. Our accommodations were cabins at Ol Tukai Lodge, located in the park. The national parks have opening and closing times, with night drives not allowed—but staying in the park meant quicker access in the morning, and we could return to camp at the last possible minute in the evening. Early morning and late afternoon provide the best light for photography, and the best sightings as well, since many of the animals just find a spot in the shade for the hot mid-day hours.

Amboseli is at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, which was often visible in the early morning before clouds, heat haze, and dust made it disappear.

The landscape is quite varied, and includes savanna grassland, acacia woodland, rocky thorn bush, swamps, and marshland as well as a lake that floods in the rainy season. I was particularly taken by the flamingos (Lesser and Greater) that flock to the lake!

It’s all about the water

Because of the water flowing underground from the mountain, some of the swamp and marshland remains wet all year round, which brings more animals to the area in the dry season.

I should note that whenever we asked our guides about rain and seasons, it became clear that climate change is bringing more drought and changing the rain patterns, and animals are dying as a result.

Zebra babies!

The giraffes in Amboseli are Maasai giraffes, recognizable by the jagged pattern of their spots.

I tried to remember to capture the wide angle as well as closeups. Interesting landscapes and dramatic skies definitely helped!

The elephants

Amboseli is known for its “super tuskers”, bull elephants with huge tusks that can each weigh 45kg/100lbs or more. You might have heard of Craig, the super tusker who died naturally this year. Because so many of them were poached, natural selection means that there are now fewer with very large tusks.

This bull elephant is in musth—a high-testosterone period in which his hormones are telling him to look for females. You can tell by the black stuff leaking from the temporal gland behind his eye; they’re often dripping urine as well. They can be quite aggressive when in musth and our guides were very careful around the bulls!

Elephant families are led by an experienced matriarch and include related females and calves. The bulls leave the family in adolescence, and live alone or in loose bachelor groups. So we would often see the bulls on their own, and groups of multiple females of varying ages, with babies, like these.

Conservation

The Amboseli Elephant Research Project has been studying the elephants here for more than 50 years, so they are some of Africa’s most studied and protected. But elephants are migratory, and the park is just part of their ecosystem.

There are only about 415,000 African elephants remaining (about 1500 in Amboseli). They are threatened by poaching (ALL hunting is illegal in Kenya), habitat loss, climate change, and human-elephant conflict. Fragmentation of land—due to settlement, farming, and other changes—is breaking up their migration corridors, and crop damage by the elephants is significant. There is hope, though, with work being done through community conservancies, land lease programs with Maasai landowners, anti-poaching patrols, and elephant corridor mapping/protection.

If you’d like to know more, the national park’s website is very informative: https://amboseli.ke/conservation-anp/

We did see signs of livestock and wildlife co-existing. These Maasai herders with goats (first image) and cattle (second) were grazing their livestock in Amboseli. You can see how hot and dry the landscape is away from the wet areas.

And finally…

Our lion sightings in this park weren’t the most satisfying in terms of photography, as they were quite far away and in very low light. These finishing off a kill…

…and just after sunrise on our last morning, a lioness with cubs, with the mountain in the distance.

But there were plenty of great lion sightings to come!

I’ll leave you with an Amboseli sunset. Next, on to Samburu!