Amboseli National Park

Amboseli National Park, a natural wonderland almost as large as Delaware and Rhode Island combined, is famous for its abundance of game, the classic quality of its lodges and camps, and for its beguiling views of Kilimanjaro, the monarch of Africa, thrusting three dizzying miles above the park’s grasslands. The glaciers atop the huge mountain, probably the largest single peak on earth, are still up there, and the mountain is often dusted with snow. As Peter Matthiessen wrote in The Tree Where Man Was Born, “A snow peak in the tropics draws the heart to a fine shimmering painful point of joy.”

Game drives in Amboseli are exceptionally rewarding: the park’s five distinct habitats (ranging from savannah to woodland and sulphur-springed wetlands) support what is probably Africa’s largest population of free-ranging elephants, along with the Cape buffaloes, impalas, lions, cheetahs, hyenas, giraffes, zebras, and wildebeest who—in addition to two score or more other mammal species and 600 bird species—make their domicile in and around the park.

Things we love about, and love to do in Amboseli

• Gazing throughout the day at Kilimanjaro, the most massive mountain on earth. Awakening to see snow on its upper reaches (when the first explorers got to the snow line, the local people who accompanied them started to put the strange substance in their bags. “What are you doing that for?” asked the Westerners. “We’ll bring it down to sell.”)
• “The morally edifying” sight of Amboseli’s famous elephants, which made Isak Dinesen feel “that I had been shown black stone sculptures of the four major Prophets.”
• Leisurely, unscripted game drives, reminders that no matter how many times we’ve seen lions, and giraffes, and elephants, it’s only when we see them up close, in their natural home, that we recognize them for the almost unearthly creatures they are.
• Enjoying beautifully arranged picnics under a cooling acacia tree.
• “Sleep so perfect,” as Elspeth Huxley remembered, that it’s “stirred but not broken by the thrilling vibrance of a lion’s roar.”   The serenity of our camps and lodges in this marvelous national park. Serenity and excitement in peaceful coexistence.