Beyond the snaggle-toothed silhouette of Mount Kenya, in the vast semi-deserts that reach out all the way to Ethiopia, you can still find wild country on a scale undreamed of elsewhere in East Africa. The Masai Mara may be the country’s top tourist destination but Kenya’s soul lies among the endless steppes and lonely inselbergs surrounding the Samburu National Reserve.

Of all the people of northern Kenya, none are more colourful than the Samburu. Cousins of the Maasai, this desert tribe of warrior nomads still cling to their old ways, tending their herds of goats and cattle as they fan out each day along the dusty game trails of their drought-prone homeland.

Arriving by air from the comparative coolness of Nairobi, it comes as a shock to step out into the blowtorch heat of a Samburu morning. The sun glitters on a billion thorns and the grass underfoot is crackling dry. But shade is at hand under the doum palms and acacia groves that grow in abundance along the Ewaso Ng’iro, the river that divides Samburu from the adjoining Buffalo Springs National Reserve.

Here live the beautiful dry-country animals that make a visit to the north unique: oryx, gerenuk, reticulated giraffe, Grevy’s zebra and Somali ostrich. With luck you should also find leopard and lion – maybe even cheetah and wild dogs – and great birding, too, with vulturine guinea fowls and golden-breasted starlings among the Samburu specials.

But above all this is elephant country. Arthur Neumann, the legendary Victorian ivory hunter, camped beside the Ewaso Ng’iro long before the reserve was created, and Samburu’s elephants still follow their ancient migration routes across the unfenced wilderness of the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT).

Until quite recently this was a region synonymous with banditry, blood feuds and ivory poaching. But the creation of the NRT, an umbrella organisation created to promote tourism and conservation among the local communities, has brought peace and security to a troubled province for the benefit of people and wildlife alike.

Samburu itself, although stunningly beautiful and rich in wildlife, is one of East Africa’s smallest reserves. But, combined with the adjacent Shaba and Buffalo Springs National Reserves and the lands over which the NRT holds sway, it becomes part of an ecosystem the size of Tsavo (22,000 square kilometres), in which 7000 elephants – the second largest population in Kenya – can now roam freely in comparative safety.

Keeping watch over them from his tiny four-seater bush plane is Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save The Elephants, the research organisation he runs from his HQ in the Samburu reserve.

When Save The Elephants began in 1993, his principal aim was to assist wildlife departments in their fight against ivory poachers and traders, but he was also intrigued by the choices elephants make, especially when they decide where to go on their long-distance migrations in the rainy season.

“By understanding elephant movements,” he says, “we can approach conservation from an elephant’s perspective.” But in order to do that he first had to identify and catalogue as many elephants as he could, by photographing their distinctively different tusks and ear patterns. As a result he and his team have named more than 700 individuals. Some are residents; others, known as ‘sporadics’ come and go with the seasons; but for all of them the Samburu reserve is their core area in which they feel safe and are fully protected.

From the air, he pointed out the problems tourism can bring as we flew over a new riverside lodge that had effectively deprived the elephants of a favourite crossing-place. Then we turned and flew upstream to where a much smaller camp lay so cleverly hidden under a woodland canopy that I could hardly see it.

This was Elephant Watch Camp, presided over by Oria, Iain’s Kenyan-born Italian wife, and it is a sublime place to stay, blessed by an idyllic riverside setting and eco-friendly to a fault. “We maintain a very low footprint here,” says Oria. “Elephants helped us build our camp by knocking down trees whose dead and weathered trunks we have simply re-cycled.”

Here, nothing separates you from the wild. One night I listened to leopards mating just behind my tent, and mirrors have to be hidden by curtains – otherwise hornbills fly in and peck at their reflections.

But best of all are Oria’s Samburu guides. Drawn from the local communities, and dressed in their traditional tribal finery, they are familiar with all the elephant families – the Virtues, the Spice Girls and the Royals – and the big breeding bulls such as Rommel, who trashed one of Iain’s research vehicles two years ago.

If there is a downside to Samburu it is the doubling of tourist beds over the past four years, sometimes producing scenes more reminiscent of the Mara, with vehicles clustered around a cornered cheetah. But fear not. Escape is at hand just 20 minutes away.

At Saruni safari lodge you can swap Samburu’s busy game trails for the total seclusion of a wilderness even bigger than the reserve itself. Saruni, the dream-come-true of Riccardo Orizio, opened last June in the midst of the Kalama Wildlife Conservancy, and although it lies only seven kilometres outside the reserve boundary it could not feel more remote.

It sits high above the surrounding plains on a giant dome of weathered granite, and to reach it, zig-zagging up into the sky on an impossibly steep and rocky track, is like driving to the edge of the world.

At first glance you could mistake Saruni’s domed rooftops for the dung-plastered huts of a Samburu manyatta, but there the resemblance ends. Inside its four spacious villas – each one with a stunning en suite bathroom – everything is ultra-modern and the views are to die for.

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From the total seclusion of your sundeck you look down past the lodge’s infinity pool to a waterhole where lion and elephant sometimes drink, and then away across oceans of bush to the slab-sided outline of Mount Ololokwe and a blue horizon rimmed by the cedar-clad summits of the Mathews Range.

Saruni celebrates its isolation in style with elaborate bush breakfasts, morning game drives in search of Grevy’s zebras, and sundowners when the stone partridges begin to call.

Every night during my stay I listened to the cough of a resident leopard, and early one morning I went out to look for him with a Samburu guide, picking our way across slabs of red granite where terminalias with rose-pink seedpods grew. We never did catch up with him, but we did find the bones of an old kill hidden in a cave decorated by primitive rock art paintings.

Saruni’s presence is a model of what the NRT hopes to achieve, spreading the benefits of eco-tourism far beyond the confines of the Samburu National Reserve, and it is not the only one.

Sasaab Lodge on the Ngutuk Ongiron Group Ranch is another example of what the NRT has helped to create in association with the local community who benefit directly and indirectly from its presence in an area where tourism never existed before. Overlooking a wide bend of the Ewaso Ng’iro just a few kilometres beyond Samburu’s West Gate, it is run by Mikey and Tanya Carr-Hartley, a well-known Kenyan family who have been at the forefront of the safari business for almost a century.

Sasaab is named after a local species of morning glory (ipomea), whose white flowers bloom beside the airstrip, and has already acquired a reputation for being one of East Africa’s finest lodges. Beyond the main dining area with its brass lanterns and Moorish arches are nine spacious thatch-and-canvas rooms, each one set apart from the rest, with its own plunge pool and view of the river.

In such blissfully peaceful surroundings it is impossible not to unwind. Every day I awoke to see the early morning sunlight fall like a blessing across the plains, touching everything with gold as red-chested cuckoos called in the riverine forest. Wood doves chanted in the trees overhead and, as at Saruni, the night echoed to the ripsaw grunting of wandering leopards

“From July to September,” says Mikey, “ the elephants gather below the lodge to drink and wallow and cross the river; and one of the nicest things to do is to take your glass of Pimms down to our infinity pool and watch them.”

Other activities on offer at Sasaab include game drives and bird walks along the river, camel trekking and cultural visits to Samburu manyattas. But best of all is an early morning flight with Will Craig in his Waco Classic, a bright yellow bi-plane designed in the 1930s for the likes of Beryl Markham and Denys Finch-Hatton.

Kitted out in goggles, helmet and leather flying jacket, I shoehorn myself into the open cockpit for what has to be the mother of all game drives. Craig, an experienced pilot with more than 6000 flying hours under his belt, clambers into the seat behind me and we’re off with a cloud of red dust in our wake.

"Wonderful, isn’t it?” he shouts above the engine’s roar. “She’s the Cadillac of aviation.”

To complete my Karen Blixen moment, the theme music from Out of Africa fills the headphones as we soar like a bateleur towards Koitogorr, the broken hill that dominates the Samburu National Reserve. Below us our shadow skims across a yawning infinity of sand rivers and acacia bush. This is some of the wildest country I’ve ever seen, accessible only on foot or by camel.

We spot zebra, giraffe and a big bull elephant flapping his ears under a tree. Then we bank over Romot, where the Ewaso Ng’iro snakes through a spectacular gorge, and fly home past the steep folds of the Laikipia Plateau.

Joyride it may have been, but it also demonstrated the key role elephants have played in creating the unique landscapes of northern Kenya. “Thirty years ago when elephants were still widespread,” Craig said to me, “much of those plains we flew over were grassland.”

“Then the poachers moved in. The elephant population crashed and the acacias took over, shutting out the grass and creating a closed canopy in places. So the local people actually need elephants to open up the bush for the benefit of grazing animals; but of course that’s a very difficult message to put across.”

Now, with security better than it has ever been, their numbers are increasing again, and with luck they may yet re-discover the tolerance that existed before, when people and elephants lived side-by-side in Kenya’s last great wilderness.

Plan your trip

Getting there
Safarilink (www.safarilink-kenya.com) have regular flights linking Nairobi’s Wilson Airport with Samburu National Reserve. Kenya Airways (www.kenya-airways.com), British Airways (www.britishairways.com) and Virgin Atlantic (www.virgin-atlantic.com) all offer non-stop service between London and Nairobi.

Visas
Visas are required by most nationalities. They are easily obtained upon arrival in Kenya, whether at an airport or land crossing. Kenya has temporarily slashed its visa cost for UK nationals by 50 per cent, from US$50 (£35) to US$25 (£18); fees have been waived completely for children under 16. Prices will return to normal at the end of 2010.

When to visit
Average daytime temperatures in this region of northern Kenya range between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius, with the mercury dipping drastically at night. The hottest months are January, February and March, while the coolest are July and August. Dry conditions are the norm from January to March
and from June to early October, providing the most ideal windows of time to visit. The long rains fall between early April and the end of May, while the short rains fall from mid October to mid December.

Find out more
Elephant Watch Camp (www.elephantwatchsafaris.com)
Kenya Wildlife Service (www.kws.go.ke)
Northern Rangelands Trust (www.nrt-kenya.org)
Saruni Samburu (www.sarunisamburu.com)
Sasaab (www.sasaab.com)
Save the Elephants (www.savetheelephants.org)