Iconic landscapes

Samburu is very atmospheric, a semi-desert area bisected by a miraculous river, lined by shady forest and characteristic doum palms.

         Unusual species

This far north we start to encounter some unusual and impressive species, including Grevy’s zebras, reticulated giraffes and gerenuks.

          Elephants

The reserve is home to the Douglas-Hamilton’s famous Elephant Watch Camp, which presides over the area’s prodigious pachiderm population.

           Samburu people

The reserve is named after the local Samburu tribe. Interaction with these traditional people, both at the lodges and in their villages, can be a genuine highlight.

           Conservancies

The often busy core reserve is surrounded by large private conservancies, where safari can be operated with elegance and finesse.

           Interesting lodges

Samburu is home to at least three very interesting and unusual lodges, all of which can add an extra dimension to a high-end safari trip.

            3 to 5 nights

For shorter trips, it is more than possible to fly into Nairobi and connect out to the Samburu for as few as 3 to 5 nights, something that we occasionally do for guests who are visiting the capital on business. However, it is much more common to visit Maasai Mara on this kind of shorter safari.

           7 to 14 nights

Most of our guests tend to deploy 7 to 14 nights on safari in Kenya. At the shorter end, it can be best to focus on one area, perhaps combining a couple of camps in the Maasai Mara. At the longer end, it is possible to also include diverse safari areas including Amboseli, Samburu, Laikipia and Mathew’s Range.

             15 to 28 nights

For longer trips, the most popular extensions include further safari in Tanzania (Maasai Mara is a small part of the Serengeti ecosystem over the border), gorilla and chimpanzee tracking in Rwanda or Uganda and tropical beaches on the Kenyan Coast, Zanzibar or even the Seychelles.

The cost of safari in Samburu

Safari in Samburu ranges from relatively pricey to eye-watering expensive. You can expect to spend USD 500 to 2500 per person per night.

We are more than happy to work across this range of prices. The only important thing is that we help you find the very best safari to suit your budget.

The two dominant price factors are the length of time that you spend on safari and the specific lodges that you choose to include in your trip. Deploying more time in town, rural and beach locations can bring the total cost down dramatically.

If you have a higher budget, we will help you determine which camps do actually deliver elevated levels of service and experience. We will also highlight other subtle ways in which your trip can be raised to another level, including the use of whole camp bookings, private guides and vehicles, helicopter explorations of remote areas etc.

If you have a medium budget, the best ways to keep a lid on costs are to travel out of high season and to carefully choose lower cost lodges.  You can also reduce the number of core safari nights and deploy time in lower cost beach, town and rural locations. We will help you understand where to trim and where to splash in order to achieve the best overall experience.

If you have a lower budget, then we can always look at other fundamentally less pricey safari areas.

Maasai Mara

The Maasai Mara is the most famous safari in Kenya, a famously scenic and rich wildlife area, with a fantastic climate and a wide range lodges. Can be reached by direct flight from Samburu.

Amboseli

Lying to the east of the Mara, Amboseli is another iconic reserve, renowned for its large tusker elephants and the fabulous backdrop of Mount Kilimanjaro, but which does suffer from unavoidable traffic.

Serengeti

The Maasai Mara represents only about 12% of the Serengeti ecosystem, the remainder lies over the border in Tanzania. However, with the land borders closed, it takes a little but of jiggery-pokery to combine the two.

The best lodges in Samburu

Samburu has around 10 safari lodges, in a very wide range of styles and price levels.

We are able to include any of these properties in your trip. We ones most like to recommend fall into two categories …

Firstly, there are the truly high-end lodges, which are in the very best locations and offer the highest levels of guiding, hospitality and consistency, suitable for demanding guests. Examples include Elephant Watch Camp, Saruni Samburu Camp and Sasaab.

Secondly, there are the relatively good value camps, which are also in excellent locations and also take their guiding very seriously, but which typically offer lower levels of luxury and have the potential to be slightly less consistent in their delivery, suitable for more easy-going guests. Examples include Elephant Bedroom Camp.

The properties that we generally prefer to avoid in Samburu are the large sausage-factory type places, which deliver nasty low-quality safari experiences to guests who appear to be on a very different agenda. We also need to avoid very simple lodges, where the experience can be too unreliable for us to recommend.

You can always expect absolute honesty from us when describing the various lodges and camps. Our primary motivation is to figure out which ones will suit you the best.

Luxury trips

Our luxury trips to Kenya combine lodges which are in prime locations, where high levels of comfort and service are guaranteed. This does not necessarily mean infinity pools and spa facilities, but it does always mean that you will be hosted and guided by the very best people in the country. That is how to truly guarantee the quality of a safari.

Adventure trips

In our adventure trips to Kenya, we use a much wider range of lodges, still in fabulous locations and offering authentic safari experiences, but often at considerably lower cost. More strenuous activities, like walking safari, are likely to feature more prominently. These cool, sometimes edgy lodges tend to be best suited to guests who are a little more outdoorsy and forgiving.

When to go on safari in Samburu

Samburu has a very unusual climate compared with most other safari areas in East Africa, being generally very arid but with two very pronounced rainy seasons in April and November.

When thinking about seasonality it is important to consider the four aspects of weather, wildlife movements, visitor traffic and prices.

Long dry season : Jun-Oct

The dry season is the classic time to visit Samburu, when the weather should be warm and sunny, with very little chance of rain.

At this time, the wildlife should be clustered along the Ewaso Njiro River, with prolific sightings, including large herds of elephants.

Visitor numbers tend to be high throughout this period, especially during Jul-Sep, so traffic avoidance is important, making the private conservancies partcularly attractive.

Prices are at their peak.

Short rainy season : Nov

November can be a month of very high rainfall, although these rains can fail completely, in which case the dry season conditions will continue and even harshen.

Visitor numbers tend to be much lower and there may be some limited discounts available at some lodges.

Short dry season : Dec-Mar

The Dec-Mar period tends to be a lull between the two main rainy months, when rainfall is usually quite low, but when wildlife viewing can vary in quality, depending on the amount of rain in the preceding November.

Visitor numbers are generally low, but with big spikes over Xmas, New Year and Easter.


Long rainy season : Apr-May

April can be a month of very high rainfall, which typically triggers the dispersal of the wildlife across a vast hinterland. With grasses also growing, wildlife viewing is likely to be a lot more challenging. Into May and the rains should be subsiding, whilst the bush is looking pretty, with lots of flowers and baby animals.

Visitor numbers tend to be very low during this period (excepting a late Easter), with most of the camps closing down for a period of refurbishment.

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What our guests say

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           Traffic

The vehicle clustering in the core riverine areas of Samburu can be significant, especially during the key Jul-Sep dry season months. Traffic avoidance can be important.

           Mass market

Kenya offers a lot of low-quality mass-market tourism, much more than neighbouring countries. This also needs to be avoided.

           Safari restrictions

Inside the main reserve, off-road driving and walking safari are not permitted. Another good reason to head for the neighbouring private conservancies.

Ngorongoro

The famous Ngorongoro Crater, one of the greatest natural wonders in Africa, lies on the south side of Serengeti and naturally fits into an overland safari heading south via Manyara and Tarangire, to end in Arusha.

Zanzibar

Whilst Kenya has its own tropical beaches, the allure of Zanzibar is too much for many people to resist. Flight connections are either via Nairobi, or direct from Serengeti.

Uganda

For gorilla and chimp tracking experiences, we usually look towards Uganda, with Rwanda being an alternative for very high-end trips. Flights to the respective capitals Entebbe and Kigali are either via Nairobi or Serengeti.