Lapped by the Indian Ocean and with Mount Kenya rising above a magnificent landscape of forested hills, patchwork farms and wooded savanna, Kenya is a richly rewarding place to travel. The country’s dramatic geography has resulted in a great range of natural habitats, harbouring a huge variety of wildlife, while its history of migration and conquest has brought about a fascinating social panorama, which includes the Swahili city-states of the coast and the Maasai of the Rift Valley.
Kenya’s world-famous national parks, tribal peoples and superb beaches lend the country an exotic image with magnetic appeal but if you get off the beaten track, you can enter the world inhabited by most Kenyans: an endlessly active scene of muddy farm tracks, corrugated-iron huts, tea shops and lodging houses, crammed buses and streets wandered by goats and children. Both on and off the tourist routes, you’ll find warmth and openness, and an abundance of superb scenery.
Kenya has complicated and rather unpredictable weather patterns, making it harder to decide the best time to visit, and the impact of climate change is striking hard. Broadly, the seasons are: hot and dry from January to March; hot and wet from April to June (the “long rains”); warm and dry from July to October; and warm and wet for a few weeks in November and early December – a period called the “short rains”. At high altitudes, it may rain at almost any time.
Temperatures are determined largely by altitude: you can reckon on a drop of 0.6°C for every 100m you climb from sea level. While the temperature at sea level in Mombasa rarely ever drops below 20°C, even just before dawn, Nairobi, up at 1660m, has a moderate climate, and in the cool season in July and August can drop to 5°C at night, even though daytime highs in the shade at that time of year easily exceed 21°C and the sun is scorching hot.
The main tourist seasons tie in with the rainfall patterns: the biggest influxes of visitors are in December–January and July–August. Dry-season travel has a number of advantages, not least of which is the greater visibility of wildlife as animals are concentrated along the diminishing watercourses. July to September is probably the best period, overall, for game-viewing, with early September almost certain to coincide with the annual wildebeest migration in the Maasai Mara. October, November and March are the months with the clearest seas for snorkelling and diving.
The coast and major game parks are the most obvious targets. If you come to Kenya on an organised tour, you’re likely to have your time divided between these two attractions. Despite the impact of human population pressures, Kenya’s wildlife spectacle remains a great experience.
The major national parks and reserves, watered by seasonal streams, are mostly located in savanna on the fringes of the highlands that take up much of the southwest quarter of the country. Through the heart of the highlands sprawls the Great Rift Valley, an archetypal East African scene of dry, thorn-tree savanna, splashed with lakes and studded by volcanoes.
Nairobi, at the southern edge of the highlands, is most often used just as a gateway, but the capital has plenty of diversions to occupy your time while arranging your travels and some very worthwhile natural and cultural attractions in its own right.
In the far west, towards Lake Victoria, lies gentler countryside, where you can travel for days without seeing another visitor and immerse yourself in Kenyan life and culture. Beyond the rolling tea plantations of Kericho and the hot plains around the port of Kisumu lies the steep volcanic massif of Mount Elgon, astride the Ugandan border. The Kakamega Forest, with its unique wildlife, is nearby, and more than enough reason to strike out west.
In the north, the land is desert or semi-desert, broken only by the highlight of gigantic Lake Turkana in the northwest, almost unnaturally blue in the brown wilderness and one of the most spectacular and memorable of all African regions.
Title Image Credit: Ninara (Image Cropped)