Amboseli- The National Park under the shadow of Kilimanjaro

Amboseli is a wonderful place. It is quite a small game park very very close to the Tanzanian border, this is the game park for you if you aren't a fan of spending hours driving round and round a game park but just kicking back and seeing things at a leisurely pace.

The road from Nairobi to the Tanzanian border is amazing. It's empty and well maintained (well... don't expect the M4, this is still Kenya). Unfortuately, when I was there in March, the road from the border to Amboseli was appalling. Deep Corrugations all the way, so bad that it was only vaguely comfortable at 80Kph! But the surface is very slippery so that wasn't really an option. Allow a lot of extra time unless you are very good at driving on that type of surface (and possibly in someone else's car)

Amboseli has, as far as I can remember, no lions and no rhinos. But it does have loads of other animals, especially elephants. If elephants are your thing, then it's a toss-up between Amboseli and Samburu (although other people have said that they've spent weeks in Samburu without seeing one, there were hundreds when I was there in the dry seasons, just playing in the river all day)

There is a campsite there with bandas too. I think it's a take everything with you type of place, but they did manage to give us firewood. The campsite is run by the Masai (apologies if I actually mean Samburu). They are friendly but sometimes overly so. They are a little difficult to avoid and keen to stare. Be prepared to pay slightly more than advertised or be very fierce. They decided we were an easy touch and told us of monkeys who would come and knock our tents down if we didn't pay the boy something. There were no baboons as far as I could see, so I thought the monkeys were probably of the rather bigger kind.

There are also some more upmarket lodges which you'll find in any guide book. Not really my thing but much easier really.

Here are a few pictures to wet your appetite, see if you can spot the hyena, we thought it was sick but then it ran off very happily at the end of the day, having sat there all day.
I took my parents to Amboseli and they loved it. My mum hadn't camped in a tent since pony club camp when she was 14! but camping in Kenya is just a tad easier than in Scotland! Here's our camp. I scored a lot of brownie points when my father woke in the middle of the night to see Kilimanjaro lit up by a full moon.