Samburu National Park is a very peaceful place and attracts animals by the presence of Ewaso Nyiro River that flows through doum palm groves and thick riverine forests, coming from the Kenyan central highlands.

The natural serenity that is evident here is due to its remote distance from industry and the inaccessibility of the reserve for many years.

It offers a variety of landscape where lion, cheetah and leopard stalk their prey. There is also an abundance of Samburu Special Five: the reticulated giraffe, the rare Grevy’s zebra, Somali ostrich, beisa oryx and gerenuk; not counting the endangered Wild Dog and PanCake Tortoise.

Samburu is the birthplace of humankind. Infact, in the 1960s and 1970s more than 160 fossil remains of early man including Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus were discovered, putting man’s origins back three million years. More than 4,000 fossil specimens of mammal and stone age artefacts have been discovered here.

The park is also home to Kamunyak, meaning the Blessed One, a lioness famous for having adopted at least 6 oryx calves and fighting off predators and lion prides  which attempted to eat her charges. She suffered starvation, since the calves will not act like lion cubs and wait somewhere while she hunts for food.

The film, Heart of a Lioness, made her famous and was first shown on the BBC and later premiered in the United States on Animal Planet.

Here, you can also meet the Samburu, semi-nomadic pastoralists closely related to the Maasai. They speak a similar language, derived from Maa, which is called Samburu. They live in this very beautiful and sparsely populated part of Kenya, that’s why they are the friendliest and most pacific tribe in the country!