GTC 1 - 10 Days Turkana Truck via Sweetwaters/ Samburu/ Marsabit/ Chalbi Desert/ Lk. Baringo
Areas of Interest: Mt. Kenya, Sweetwaters(Rehabilitated Chimpanzees and Black Rhino Breeding Sanctuary), Samburu Game Reserve(Gerenuk and Grevs Zebra), Marsabit, Kalacha, Chalbi Desert, Lake Turkana (Jade Sea), Loiyangalani, Turkana Manyattas, Tuum, Lake Baringo.
Activities: Culture, Ethnic, Wildlife, Camping, Boat Ride, Scenery, Photography, Camel Walk, Camping and Traditional Turkana Bandas, Turkana village visit, Bird Watching, Facilities to use at Oasis Lodge in Loiyangalani (extra cost), swimming facilities (extra cost).
Country: Kenya
Northern Kenya is lightly populated, untamed and often barren. Setting foot in these parts is like leaving the 21st century; it is an explorer’s heaven, and the tribes that live here are some of the most captivating people in the world. They include the Samburu, Turkana, Rendille, Boran, Gabbra and El – Molo.
This rugged 1,800-km expedition is run in land cruiser or Landrover, as trucks are not allowed into the Sweetwaters Private Game Ranch. This means a maximum group size of 9. It takes you up into the heart of the Northern Frontier District via the Sweetwaters and Samburu Game Reserve. You will traverse along some of Africa’s worst roads; see beautiful mountain forest surrounded on all sides by hot dusty deserts, eventually arriving at our camp on the shores of the Jade Sea (Lake Turkana).
Philip Briggs, travel writer and tour consultant best describes our safari by saying “While it is the lake that provides the nominal incentives for doing this trip, it is the people of northern Kenya that make the most lasting impression, nomadic pastoralists such as the Gabbra, Turkana and Samburu whose adherence to a strictly traditional lifestyle and dress is practically unique in modern East Africa. In small villages such as North Horr or Kalacha, even in the city of Loiyangalani, you could be forgiven for thinking that the whole human spectacle is being put on for tourists – except that practically no tourists pass this way aside from the fortnightly Gametrackers truck. As we returned to Nairobi from Turkana, we felt as if we had travelled not only through space but also through time, to be granted a vision of Africa as it might have been a hundred years ago. That this ancient human landscape still exists in a country as relatively developed as Kenya simply defies belief!” Briggs, P. (2nd Ed.) East and Southern Africa: The Backpacker’s Manual, Bradt 2001.
Gametrackers has been offering this as our best selling safari for over 21 years especially for those true explorers and travellers who want to get off the beaten tourist track and for it, we are highly recommended.
Ours is the only camp situated right on the beach of the lake with spectacular views of the South Island. The camp comprises 12 double traditional Turkana palm leaf huts, a dining/lounge, kitchen, showers and toilets which are all available for use, if not, we pitch tent nearby. You will see a great variety of tribes during the tour and cross the Chalbi Desert if dry. During the rains it becomes an enormous shallow lake. At Tuum we spend time camel walking with Samburu local guides on the foothills of Mt. Nyiro.
To see Kenya route map click here
To see East Africa route map click here
Day 1 – Mt. Kenya
Depart Nairobi in the morning and proceed towards the slopes of Africa's second largest mountain at 5199m - Mt Kenya. Afternoon game drive at Sweetwater’s game ranch to see the wildlife including rehabilitated chimpanzees. We spend the night at Mountain Rock Campsite.
Mount Kenya was shaped by volcanic action linked with the creation of the Rift Valley and is thought to be older than Mount Kilimanjaro; geologists believe it previously stretched at least 1500m above its present height of 5199m (17,057ft).
The private ranch at Sweetwater’s is the only sanctuary for rehabilitation in Kenya of these widely abused chimpanzees with two groups living in an environment as close to their natural habitat as possible. The site is also a dedicated black rhino breeding area.
Day 2 – Samburu
Depart in the morning for Samburu game reserve to arrive there in time for the afternoon game drive in the park. Accommodation in our semi-permanent campsite beautifully set under a canopy of trees or pitch tents on the edge of Uaso Nyiro River (meaning Brown in Samburu language). Cold showers are available which are amazingly refreshing in the hot, dusty climates.
Samburu is part of a lava plain that includes a diverse landscape of thorn scrub, red dirt, dried river beds, broken volcanic rock, steep hills, and rocky outcroppings - some large enough to be called mesas. This reserve is becoming one of Kenya's most admired stops after the Mara.
The region is home to the uncommon Grevy’s zebra with huge fury ears, gerenuk antelope standing on hind legs to feed, Somali ostriches with distinct blue legs and the shy Oryx. Elephant and crocodile are guaranteed sightings and excellent bird watching is available here with numerous varieties of weaverbirds and the martial eagle to be seen. Leopard sighting is also a special feature here.
Day 3 – Marsabit
Sometimes waking up to the sounds of splashing elephant in the river we head north again along the Trans-African highway to Marsabit. Marsabit (meaning place of cold) is an astonishingly cool, green and hilly oasis rising high above the dry heat of the surrounding desert lands.
The local Rendille people in their bright red outfits, beads and earrings make it a vibrant place. After setting up camp, we visit the lodge inside the National park and so long as the roads are dry we drive to Lake Paradise and Little Lake - an indigenous forest and a desert that come together to create the most compelling landscape on earth. Elephants and greater kudu abound. The dense forest in the park is also home to a variety of birds.
Day 4 – Kalacha
We visit Marsabit town and another volcanic crater before making our way back into the desert and lava flows. We camp at Kalacha, a small Gabbra settlement on the edge of the Chalbi Desert.
The Gabbra are an Eastern Cushite people related to the Somali-Rendille in their historical origins in the southern Ethiopian highlands about AD 1000. They are pastoralists, particularly attached to their camels.
Day 5 - Lake Turkana
We depart early, crossing the Chalbi Desert. Lake Turkana is the largest desert lake in the world and extends for 288 kilometres up to the Ethiopian / Kenyan border and is surrounded by volcanic rock and desert. We arrive at our semi - permanent beach village where we have our traditional Turkana Huts (if still available; if not we pitch tent at an alternative campsite) which make it a perfect place to relax, protected from the scorching sun and heat characteristic of the climate of this remote area.
Day 6 – Lake Turkana
The day is spent relaxing and you may visit the local lodge to swim or hire a boat to visit the surrounding area (at an extra cost).
In addition, we may visit Loiyangalani and the community settled there while in the evening visiting one of the Turkana Manyattas [optional] for traditional dances at an extra cost if clients wish. An unforgettable experience under a star studded sky so close you can almost touch it.
Turkana, formerly L. Rudolf is now named after one of the tribes who live on its shores and it is in this area that Richard Leakey uncovered the three million year old fossils of ‘Homo Erectus.’ This pre historic site is now known as the “Cradle of Mankind”. The Lake is also known as the “Jade Sea” because of its remarkable blue – green colour. This is a result of algae particles, which shift with changes of the wind and light, so that the water surface shifts from blue to grey to fabulous jade. The lake is home to the largest population of Nile crocodiles in the world.
Day 7: Tuum camel safari
Departing Lake Turkana via the very rocky road out of the Rift Valley we head south to Tuum, situated on the west of Mt. Nyiro which stands to the East of the Suguta Valley. This is a very scenic but rough drive through lava flows to the broken sands on the edge of the Kaisut desert. After a picnic lunch, you get the chance to walk with camels and Samburu guides in these breath-taking landscapes for a few hours to the foothills of Mt. Nyiro where you set camp together with the guides and camels.
The Suguta valley is a huge sector of the Rift Valley between Lake Baringo and Lake Turkana. At the north end, the valley floor is only a few hundred metres above sea level, making it one of the lowest parts of the Rift Valley structure. It is one of the hottest parts of Kenya with deserts, volcanic cones, salt lakes and uneven lava fields.
Mt. Nyiro is encircled by desert but its upper slopes are covered in forest and small springs surface lower down to nourish the villages of Tuum and South Horr and numerous other small settlements in the foothills. From the top of Mt. Nyiro to the bottom of the Suguta, the land drops over 2500m in less than 20km. This vicinity is sliced through by bottomless ravines, called luggas; which are regularly dry but become soaked with sudden flash floods after rain.
Day 8 –Maralal
After breakfast we have an early morning walk in the cool and spectacular African sunrise for a couple of hours after which we proceed to Maralal where we spend the night. Maralal is the unofficial capital of the Samburu people and has a distinctly frontier feel about it.
Near Maralal is one of the most breath taking scenes in all of Kenya – the Losiolo escarpment, an endless stretch as land drops down to the Suguta valley. Maralal is also home of the Maralal International Camel Derby that happens once a year between July and October and attracts riders and spectators from the four corners of the world
Day 9 – Lake Baringo
Heading south we visit Lake Baringo where we spend the night at a campsite sleeping amongst the grazing hippos. L. Baringo is the most Northerly of Kenya’s small Rift Valley lakes; creased with papyrus and well developed acacia forest. Hippos, crocodiles and monitor lizards are effortlessly seen from the shore.
Likewise, this is Kenya's bird watching centre with over 1200 different species native to the country and more than 450 sighted here and is thus a bird watcher's haven but beware as this is malaria land.
Day 10 – Nairobi
After breakfast we go on an early morning boat ride in search of hippo, crocodile and fish eagle. Drive back to Nairobi after breakfast to arrive in the late afternoon.
|
