Aberdare National Park
Highlands, moorlands, peaks and falls
Aptly dubbed ‘Scotland with Lions’, this atmospheric park showcases the chilly wilds and beautiful moorlands of the Aberdare mountain range. It’s an often mist-wreathed realm where elephants roam through lichen-hung forests, spectacular waterfalls plunge into churning pools and trout-filled streams cascade through mossy dells. When the atmospheric fog clears, the upper Aberdares offer matchless views of Mount Kenya’s glittering coronet and the sparkling lakes of the Great Rift Valley. There is some challenging trekking in the high moorland, with four accessible peaks between 3500m and 4000m. The thick bush of the Aberdare Salient provides the perfect prowling grounds for leopard, hyena and bongo. It was here in 1952, at the famous Treetops hotel, that the young Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II.
Wildlife highlights: black rhino, elephant, leopard, hyena, giant forest hog, buffalo, eland, the rare bongo antelope, 250 recorded species of bird
Activities: wildlife drives, trekking, fishing 
Best time to visit: June to February


Lake Nakuru National Park
Shimmering mirage, flamingo realm
Entitled ‘the greatest bird spectacle on earth’ thanks to the millions of flamingos that flock to feed from its alkaline water, the fuchsia-frosted shores and mirror-like waters of Lake Nakuru yield some of the most evocative images in Africa. Picturesque lookouts and picnic spots abound on the upper slopes, though keep an eye out for leopards. As Kenya’s first and largest rhino sanctuary, sightings of both black and white rhino are almost guaranteed, while plentiful waterbuck, warthog, zebra, gazelle and buffalo graze the shoreline. Echoing to the haunting cries of fish eagles, the park’s forests are a great opportunity to spot a leopard.
Despite being laden with wildlife, this park’s small size makes it the ideal day trip while en route to other destinations.
Wildlife highlights: lion, black and white rhino, waterbuck, hippo, leopard, hyrax, colobus monkey, Rothschild’s giraffe, some 1.5 million flamingos
Activities: wildlife drives
Best time to visit: year-round


Hell’s Gate National Park
A volcanic theatre
Rising from the floor of the Rift Valley, the towering cliffs and undulating grasslands of this relatively small park offer the only venue in Kenya where you can walk or mountain bike (unaccompanied) alongside herds of buffalo, zebra, eland, hartebeest, Thomson’s gazelle and giraffe. A volcanic landscape of tortured basalt cliffs, winding water-gouged gorges, stark rock towers, scrub-clad volcanoes, sultry steaming vents, and belching plumes of geothermal steam, this park is pure theatre, and has provided the backdrop to many a Hollywood movie. Community guides offer tours of the dramatic gorge (where boiling water spouts from the rock), professional climbers offer climbing lessons on one of the park’s massive volcanic plugs and several nearby outfits rent mountain bikes.
Wildlife highlights: eland, buffalo, lion, giraffe, zebra, leopard, impala, Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelle, klipspringer, hyrax, mountain reedbuck, 103 recorded species of bird
Activities: wildlife drives, hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing
Best time to visit: year-round

Shimba Hills National Reserve
Sanctuary of the sable antelope
Floating a cool 400m above the palm-fringed reaches of Kenya’s glittering coastline, the Shimba Hills National Reserve offers a unique blend of misty wood-cloaked downs, breeze-fanned hills, plunging waterfalls and liana-strung jungle. Here, elephant wander through the primeval stillness of one of the East Africa’s last remaining coastal rainforests. Famed as the only Kenyan habitat of the rare and magnificent sable antelope, this often-underrated reserve also features a number of sacred ayas (forest shrines), and glades of magnificent fern-like cycads, last survivors of a species that first flourished on earth some 200 million years ago.
Wildlife highlights: sable antelope, buffalo, waterbuck, bushbuck, hyena, warthog, giraffe, elephant, leopard, baboon, monkey (Sykes, vervet and colobus), bush pig, 111 recorded species of bird
Activities: wildlife drives, walking, forest tours Best time to visit: year-round

Nairobi National Park
On the verge – greatness
The oldest of Kenya’s national parks and the first national park to be established in East Africa, Nairobi National Park is unique. No other capital city in the world can boast a natural wilderness, teeming with wildlife and over 400 species of birds, just ten minutes from downtown. An oasis of lion-gold plains, acacia-fringed rivers, leopard stalked cliffs, plunging gorges and murky hippo pools, this versatile park hosts its own wildebeest migration and is the only place on earth where you can find a black rhino grazing against the silhouettes of office blocks and skyscrapers. It’s even possible to walk along trails near the hippo pools.
Wildlife highlights: rhino, buffalo, lion, leopard, crocodile, hippo, 400 species of birds
Activities: wildlife drives, walking Best time to visit: year-round

Sibiloi National Park
Cradle of mankind?
Shimmering like a mirage in the harshly beautiful landscape of northern Kenya, Lake Turkana is the largest permanent desert lake in the world. The mesmerising blue-green waters of this 6400 square kilometre alkaline giant have earned it the title of ‘The Jade Sea’. Lashed by searing winds and fringed by stark cliffs, rocky beaches, 12,000 crocodiles and the petrified remains of a once-great cedar forest that flourished seven million years ago, this is a surreal landscape indeed. The park hosts the renowned Koobi Fora palaeontological site, which is home to the fossilised remains of our earliest forbears: Homo habilis and Homo erectus.
Activities: fossil hunting Best time to visit: July and August

Amboseli National Park
Kilimanjaro’s kingdom
Famously towered over by the magnificent bulk of Mount Kilimanjaro (5896m), Africa’s highest mountain, Amboseli is one of Kenya’s oldest and most visited parks. Endlessly panoramic, yet comparatively compact, it’s dotted with emerald green swamps in which great herds of elephant wallow half-submerged in papyrus grasses. The permanent marshlands also provide a potent draw to hippo, buffalo and abundant water birds. An International Biosphere Reserve, the park largely constitutes the typically dry lakebed of Lake Amboseli, which is surrounded by flat grasslands and a few trees. On the plains are numerous antelopes, spotted hyenas, jackals, warthogs, olive baboons and vervet monkeys. Lions are rare. Observation Hill, an easily climbed conical peak, offers stunning views of Kilimanjaro.
Wildlife highlights: lion, cheetah, leopard, elephant, zebra, hippo, spotted and striped hyena, giraffe, oryx, wildebeest, impala, Grant’s gazelle, 425 recorded species of bird.
Activities: wildlife drives 
Best time to visit: June to October

Mount Elgon National Park
The ‘Mountain of Illusion’
High in the mist-wreathed hills of Western Kenya, Mount Elgon (4321m) is a towering dormant volcano, some 24 million years old. Crowned by a vast crater, etched by glacial tarns, honeycombed by labyrinthine caves, cascaded by streams and cloaked in forest, it straddles Kenya’s border with Uganda. Once the highest mountain in Africa, and held sacred since the dawn of time, enigmatic Elgon is known as the ‘Mountain of Illusion’. However its distant, remote location have also earned it the title of ‘the loneliest park in Kenya’. A combination of wild alpine moorland, rustling monkey-filled bamboo thickets and dense forests, the park is renowned for its 400 elephants, known as the ‘Troglodyte Tuskers’, thanks to their habit of nocturnal ‘mining’ for salt in the mountain’s extensive bat-filled caves.
Wildlife highlights: elephant, giant forest hog, bushbuck, eland, duiker, black and white colobus, blue monkey, 240 species of bird
Activities: trekking, walking, fishing Best time to visit: December to February

Lake Bogoria National Reserve
“The most beautiful place in Africa” JW Gregory, 1893
The most dramatic, yet least visited, Great Rift Valley lake, Bogoria is a sinuous pewter-blue ribbon of mirrored water that’s often frosted pink with a million or so flamingos. Its bubbling western shores play home to Kenya’s most spectacular volcanic springs, which spout devilish geysers. Designated a World Heritage Site, it has around 200 individual springs that boil up through the earth’s precariously shallow crust here. Temperatures of the fluids and steam range between 94°C and 104°C. The lake is bounded to the east by the forbidding walls of the Siracho Escarpment, while the southern shore hosts gentle groves of fig trees and acacias, in whose shade linger the rare and beautiful greater kudu. Surreally the lake’s foreboding landscape, complete with its dizzying array of colours, combined with the bizarre spectacle of visitors boiling eggs in its scalding waters, makes Bogoria a vision of an insanely beautiful hell.
Wildlife highlights: greater kudu, hyena, jackal, leopard, 222 recorded species of bird
Activities: walking, hot springs
Best time to visit: year-round

Mount Kenya National Park
Namesake of a nation
Mount Kenya (5199m), Kenya’s highest mountain, has the rare distinction of being both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. This extinct volcano is also sacred to the Kikuyu people, who believe it is the home of their supreme god Ngai. To most Kenyans, it’s a national icon and the namesake of their nation. For many discriminating East African trekkers, Mount Kenya  is top choice; it provides more attractive scenery, more varied terrain and more interesting flora and fauna than its more famous neighbour Kilimanjaro. You can even glimpse glaciers and the equator simultaneously while trekking here. Anyone in reasonable health can attempt the steep trek to Point Lenana (4985m), while only experienced rock-climbers can take on the summit. Yes, it’s much like K2 is to Everest (more respected, but less visited).
Wildlife highlights: giant forest hog, tree hyrax, white-tailed mongoose, suni, black-fronted duiker, bongo, Mount Kenya mouse shrew, duiker, endemic mole-rat, 130 recorded species of bird
Activities: trekking, rock climbing
Best time to visit: January, February, August, and September

The Masai Mara
The greatest wildlife show on earth
World renowned for the breathtaking spectacle of the annual migration that sees half a million wildebeest crossing the Mara River, the Masai Mara is Kenya’s most visited protected area. Forming part of the Serengeti ecosystem, its rolling grasslands, meandering rivers and towering escarpments offer one of the world’s most rewarding and evocative wildlife arenas. Historically teeming with herbivores, the Mara makes the ideal hunting ground for Kenya’s famous big cats and hosts a healthy population of cheetahs and lions. The Mara is also famous for the large herds of elephant and buffalo that wander its plains and for the fat pods of hippo that wallow in its mud-brown rivers.
Wildlife highlights: elephant, buffalo, hippo, Masai giraffe, topi, Coke’s hartebeest, gazelle, zebra, impala, vervet monkey, blue and red-tailed monkey, nocturnal bush baby, tree hyrax, 550 recorded species of bird
Activities: wildlife drives
Best time to visit: July to October

Samburu, Shaba and Buffalo Springs National Reserves
A river runs through them
Vast, magnificent and still largely unexplored, these three neighbouring reserves linked by the Ewaso Ngiro River, offer an evocative cocktail of uniquely contrasting habitats, veering from stark cliffs, boulder-strewn scarps and bone-dry bush to lush swamps, muddy sandbanks and riverine forests. Samburu is uncompromisingly rugged, yet vividly beautiful, while Buffalo Springs is a little more verdant. Shaba is dominated by its volcanic landscapes and was once the home of Joy Adamson of Born Free fame. Admission covers entry to all three parks, so you’re free to roam. You’re virtually guaranteed encounters with the large elephant herds (best seen crossing the river at dusk), as well as sightings of reticulated giraffe, Somali ostrich, gerenuk and the endangered Grevy’s zebra.
Wildlife highlights: Grevy’s zebra, elephant, leopard, hyena, jackal, buffalo, hippo, Somali ostrich, oryx, gerenuk, gazelle, hyrax, klipspringer, 395 recorded species of bird
Activities: wildlife drives 
Best time to visit: year-round

Tsavo East and West National Parks
Theatre of the wild
The joint area of Tsavo West and Tsavo East forms one of the largest national parks in the world and amazingly covers almost 4% of Kenya’s total land area. Much more wild than Amboseli and the Mara, the undergrowth here makes animal observation more of a skill than a pastime. However, the absence of those parks’ crowds and the fact that the Tsavos host some of the nation’s most dramatic landscapes more than make up for the extra ocular effort. Tsavo East is the least developed of the Tsavo parks and blankets the parched, rolling plains of the Yatta Plateau. Most wildlife encounters take place along the meandering Galana River. Much like the park itself, these interactions are less tame than elsewhere – the elephants can be particularly unruly. Tsavo West, land of lions and lava, is painted on a sprawling savannah canvas of endless skies and emerald hills. Watch for hippos wallowing, snorting and blowing in the crystal clear melt waters of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Wildlife highlights: elephant, lion, hippo, zebra, hartebeest, lesser kudu, eland, waterbuck, Grant’s gazelle, impala, gerenuk, giraffe, dik-dik, klipspringer, 600 recorded species of bird
Activities: wildlife drives, rock climbing, walking 
Best time to visit: year-round

The Kakamega Forest National Reserve
The last of the rainforests
Renowned among zoologists and botanists, the shaded vaults of this dense and verdant forest shelter over 330 species of birds, 500 species of butterflies, seven species of primates and a host of other mammals, reptiles and insects, many of which aren’t found anywhere else in Kenya. This block of forest represents the last Kenyan remnant of the ancient Guineo-Congolian forest, which once stretched across the continent. Numerous walking trails criss-cross its depths and lead to open glades where clouds of butterflies flutter.
Wildlife highlights: black-and-white colobus monkey, De Brazza’s monkey, blue monkey, red-tailed monkey, red-legged sun squirrel, giant forest squirrel, bushbuck, duiker, serval, 330 recorded species of bird
Activities: walking  
Best time to visit: year-round

Kisite-Mpunguti Marine National Park and Reserve
Enchanted underwater realm
An enchanted realm of living coral gardens, sculpted islands, wheeling seabirds and sparklingly clear seas, this renowned Marine Park promises an underwater world of unbelievable colour and discovery. The reef showcases a shifting rainbow composed of celestial-blue parrotfish, snappers, rubber fish, zebra fish, butterfly fish, angel fish and scorpion fish. Hunting sharks, rays, turtles and starfish also prowl the reef in search of prey, while moray eels hide in holes alongside small crabs and wrasses. The park encompasses four small Indian Ocean islands, the largest of which is Wasini. A haven of low rag coral forest and venerable baobab trees, Wasini has a refreshing absence of roads and cars. Diversions include world-class diving and snorkelling, dolphin-spotting, dhow trips and extravagant crab lunches.
Wildlife highlights: corals, sea urchins, cowrie, eels, starfish, various crabs, sergeant major fish, parrot fish, butterfly fish
Activities: scuba diving, snorkelling, dhow trips, swimming
Best time to visit: October to March


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