5-Day Amboseli - Tsavo Budget Safari Tour

Arrival and Pickup Amboseli National Park Client's Choice Depart Nairobi early morning heading south on the Namanga highway past the Athi Plains — already alive with zebra and wildebeest on the farmland fringes. As Kilimanjaro's massive profile emerges from the clouds, you know Amboseli is near. Afternoon game drive explores the park's famous open marshland swamps — Enkongo Narok and Olokenya — where elephant herds of 20 to 200 strong gather to drink and bathe, offering extraordinary photographic opportunities with Africa's highest peak as a backdrop.

Activities : Game Drives

Amboseli National Park Client's Choice Amboseli's famous large-tusked elephant bulls — some of the last remaining in Africa — move freely through the park's open landscape. Observation Hill at dawn offers the most spectacular panoramic view in East Africa: the entire park spread below, smoke rising from Maasai manyattas, and Kilimanjaro's twin peaks of Kibo and Mawenzi glowing in the morning light. The park's open terrain means wildlife is exceptionally easy to photograph without obstructing bush or trees. Lion, cheetah, hyena and jackal are all regularly seen, along with massive numbers of zebra, wildebeest and buffalo.

Activities : Game Drives

Client's Choice Drive northeast along the base of the Kilimanjaro massif through the wide Rombo plains, entering Tsavo East through the Sala Gate. Tsavo East — at nearly 14,000 square kilometres one of the world's largest national parks — is a vast flat wilderness of red-earth plains, palm-lined rivers and dramatic lava ridges. The park's famous red elephants — stained rusty-red by the iron-rich volcanic dust in which they love to bathe — appear in enormous herds of 50 to 200 individuals along the Galana River. An afternoon game drive along the Galana reveals hippos, Nile crocodiles, crocodile bird (Egyptian plover), oryx, lesser kudu and enormous buffalo herds.

Activities : Game Drives

Client's Choice A full day exploring Tsavo East's most spectacular wildlife corridors. Mudanda Rock — a kilometre-long inselberg that acts as a natural water catchment — draws hundreds of elephants to its pools below, and the viewing from the top is among Kenya's most dramatic wildlife spectacles. The Lugard Falls on the Galana River are a series of dramatic natural rapids where the river squeezes through volcanic basalt channels just a metre wide — Nile crocodiles lie on the banks beside water so fast and clear it looks impossible. Northern Tsavo East's open grassland supports large numbers of fringe-eared oryx, gerenuk and Somali ostrich.

Activities : Game Drives

Departure A final early morning game drive along the Voi River circuit catches the park's lions emerging from their evening hunts and waterholes busy with morning drinkers. After breakfast, the drive west through Tsavo West and up into the highlands returns you to Nairobi by late afternoon.

Activities : Game Drives