Game Drives At Samburu Nature Park

Written by Arijana Tkalčec

Although it's not the most famous reserve in Kenya, we decided to base ourselves in Samburu National Reserve and stayed at Ashnil Samburu Camp. More about our stay there you can read in our previous post.

A giraffe and our camp in the background

The game drives are actually sightseeing safaris where you mostly search for the Big Five. For Samburu Park, that's the Grevy's zebra, the long-necked gerenuk, reticulated giraffe, oryx, and the Somali ostrich. But you can also see the original African Big Five there too; the lion, leopard, elephant, and buffalo. Only rhinos aren't there anymore due to heavy poaching. And the Park is quite popular by its leopard sightings.

Baby leopard

We had game drives twice a day. Morning and afternoon one. In the morning we started at sunrise and spent a couple of hours driving around searching for animals. Mornings can be a bit chilly so make sure to take a vest. The afternoon one usually finishes a bit before sunset because of safety reasons.

Game drives

You can even arrange to have longer game drives so you have lunch somewhere in the middle of the park. You get little lunch boxes with everything inside, actual meals to desserts, fruits and drinks. Then you just place it on the car and enjoy the view. We had a view of a family of elephants bathing in a river.

Elephants playing next to our lunch spot

Our main goal was to see the big cats. We were able to see leopards a few times, mostly with the help of monkeys as they get really excited when they see them. They make loud noises to let other monkeys know that the leopard is here and to let the leopard know they see him. The good thing is that other drivers always let others know if they see some big cat so everyone can come and also see them.

If you see monkeys doing this, the leopard is around.

Unfortunately, we did not see a lion. Our driver tried so hard and we even spent one whole morning trying to find one. We got close, saw fresh lion footprints, but he was probably hiding in shades as it was hot. Next time, I hope.

Besides leopards, we saw many giraffes, elephants, zebras, dik-diks, impalas, baboons, gerenuks, oryx, monkeys. We even saw a crocodile, Pumba (warthog) and hypos (we got really lucky as it's hard to spot them in May when we visited). We also saw many other animals, especially birds as there are over 350 species of birds in the park.

This bird isn't afraid of people and comes very close to you.

I would highly recommend visiting this national reserve, but from December through March and July through October when the wildlife viewing is at its prime.

Now, take a look at a few more photos we took.