Marsabit National Park

Around 1 a.m. on my second night in Marsabit, I woke to heavy feet crackling through dry thickets of brush, then nothing as I lay in my two-person backpacking tent. I then slowly propped myself up on elbows, and through a hand-sized triangle "window" in my rain fly, I saw only a full moon spot-lighting the crater's rim.

Then I turned my gaze left. Sweet Jesus!!!

Something, someone, a giant, stood at my proverbial doorstep, its face so close I could hear its breath. The massive head of an elephant... and by the symmetry of its silhouette — a dark void in an otherwise galactic milky midnight-blue sky of stars and moon — was looking square in my direction...

The o.o33 mm worth of woven fibers between him and me provided no comfort. As a physical sensation of thrill pumped through me — equally matched with a feeling of utter helplessness — the elephant shuffled a step closer. I quietly pushed my elbows aside and slowly reclined... stiff, and waited.

The elephant then took another step forward, crunching more twiggy brush under its foot... one more and it's going to be on top of me, I thought. Its body ballooned a darker shadow over the tent, blocking out the moon's lights, and with his trunk, bopped the top of tent sending tremors through its aluminium polls. "Hey, man... sleeping here." I stayed silent.

I've watched elephants use outcroppings before to scratch their backs. Rolling side to side with their hind legs, pushing their weight into the rock. I trusted that its trunk transmitted a favorable neuro-message that this wasn't a practical option — this is no boulder, it certainly thought. Then his unfurled trunk landed with a thud next to my ear as further investigations continued. Its prehensile "fingers" rubbed against the tent while an inhaling trunk sucked the oxygen from my inner brain out my ear and into some kind of stethoscope-ish reverb didgeridoo. It was immensely loud — Spinal Tap "11" kind of loud.

In a moment the elephant pivoted right and with three short steps was interrogating a cooking pot and a backpacking stove I've had for decades. My Helinox camping chair was toppled over next. With another step, he crushed an empty can of Tusker lager — Kenya's favorite beer — triggering a flash distraction, a save-the-planet aluminium recycling campaign. I remained horizontal, my heart still thrill-pumping blood.

Seemingly disinterested with its find, the elephant pivoted towards the tent once more. As he stepped into tent's moonlight again, filling my space with a darker darkness. It made one more query of the tent's dome and then slowly slumbered left, staggering up the crater's slope until it was gone.

I saw only one solitary bull elephant while camping at Lake Paradise, pictured here. I’m certain he was my midnight visitor. In fact, in this photo from the day before, you can see the plan forming: munch some succulent grass, play it cool with no sudden movements, and wait for nightfall. A standard routine of any midnight prowler.

I did manage a few hours of sleep after this. With sun up, I zipped open the tent, staggered out, and awkwardly stood up while thorny thickets latched onto my head on the way up. Then, a panoramic scan of the lake's rim zoomed in on a lone spotted hyena some 25-30 meters away, more upright than myself, and eyes locked as I pulled twigs from my disheveled hair.

"Dammit", I thought, "I'm in no condition to deal with this situation." But five seconds later the hyena turned in the direction of the rising sun and galloped off, silently slipping into the forest and out of sight. I managed a poor photo, but it captures what otherwise felt like a ghost to me at the time.

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Sir Richard Francis Burton, the 19th Century polyglot swordsman explorer, is known for many things, among them his travels to Mecca and travails in East Africa. Less familiar to readers are his writings on his journey from North America's Salt Lake to the Pacific Ocean in The City of the Saints and Across the Rocky Mountains to California (1860). A few pages in this book describe the Native American tipi with the Bedouin bayt al-shar, offering what is likely the only single first-hand account of nomadic life among both groups in the same book.

Why is this relevant here? The Marsabit experience is found by threading day with night together, best done by camping inside park. Whether it be bison hide, goat skin, or a standard nylon variety, the material makes no difference. What’s important is that this quintessentially Kenyan wilderness experience not be reduced to an in-and-out midday drive, but rather a continuous (and at a minimum) complete 24-hour experience. If you can find the ground space for a bayt al-shar, make it a week.

But it's the word safari, introduced by Burton from Swahili to the English language in the mid 1800s — taken earlier from the Arabic safar — that I am more concerned with in the context of Marsabit National Park.

Safari, meaning 'travel' or 'journey', has, as a concept, transformed wildly since the 1800s. Today it applies to many types of joy-seeking from bicycle to boat to balloon safaris and more. A common thread between all safaris, at least to most westerners, is the idea of coupling journey with wildlife — the latter being an integral part of any safari. But there's a lesser practiced safari, one you've never heard of and won't read about in glossy magazines or see featured in time-kill Instagram reels. It's the least sexy and photogenic of all of them, but in Marsabit, it is, frankly, the only safari variety that will achieve why you've come here in the first place. It's known as the lawn-chair safari... or as Burton might have called it, a Bedouin-style self love experience, or something in that vein. In any case, I’ll explain.

You might be thinking that a lawn-chair safari sounds like lazy-person indifference to, or avoidance of, adventure and physical exertion. I suppose it could be called a camping-chair safari — if that sounds more Wild Bill-ish for your liking — but that term lends emphasis to campfire songs and ashy marshmallows: these are not your principal objectives in Marsabit. Lawn-chair, instead, evokes an image of day-time leisure while outside on freshly-cut grass under a warm sun, where time and obligation are suspended. This is what you're aiming for. What is the pared-down essence of the lawn-chair safari in Marsabit? It's performing only one activity from sun up to sun down, in the comfort of that chair — watching wildlife for the entirety of a day while you move no further than three meters from your morning position, because you might get a better view or better track with the shade of a tree if you allow for some periodic adjustment. It's most certainly the antithesis of the 4x4 game drive.

If your usual park experience is done with the intention to drive in, follow some roads and see what you find, and then drive out — which is lovely to do in many other parks — this is not the place for it. But, if you lawn-chair it, then what you should expect in Marsabit is something unlike any other safari experience you've ever had in your life... EVER!

Most of the park’s 1,500 square kilometers are covered with dense forest and bushy ground cover. From a moving vehicle you’ll see a lot of tree trunks, leaves, and low vegetation. Marsabit National Park is a mountain, shrouded in montane forest that sits above a expansive dry landscape stretching all directions for hundreds of kilometers. Despite this isolation within an extremely arid region, the park’s altitude creates a peculiar ecological zone that is kept green by relatively high rainfall — some 90cm per annum — and with its rich volcanic soils, a lot of that water is retained, inducing evergreen forests and deciduous woodlands and perennial grasses, that latter favored among elephants and buffaloes.

Road inside the park to Lake Paradise

Rainfall pools in the park's two volcanic craters, with each accessible by road or foot, but Lake Paradise is ideal for camping. The other, Sokota Diko, is home to the park's only lodge, which, in October 2020, appeared to be deserted, or at least in some sort of pandemic-induced dormancy.

Think of Marsabit, or more specifically, Lake Paradise, as a 24-hour improv theatre with a list of cast members that make up some of the most extraordinary animals on earth. It's a show with no beginning and no end, and you come and go as you like, and your seat — that lawn chair you brought with you — is the only one in the house. This stage, the lake, is nearly a half kilometer wide and a full kilometer long. The theatre, the crater, is another 2x larger.

So, to say it again, bliss here is achieved by spending an entire day — or more — relaxing in your chair on the lake’s edge eagerly watching for who's next to emerge from the forest curtain and saunter on to the stage and the crater’s watery fill. Pole pole. To break stride, go for a walk around the lake. Binoculars, check.

Abundant in the park are grevy's zebra (an uncommon forest dweller, except here), elephants, buffaloes, bush bucks, kudus, baboons, spotted hyenas and birds galore, both permanent residents and migratory varieties. There are reticulated giraffe somewhere but I didn't see any. By night, there's limitless nocturnal action, and on one after-hours scan of the lake's edge with all 746 lumens of my Maglite torch, I counted over 50 sets of glowing yellow eyes looking back at me.

Each evening begins the same way: an opening chorus of zealous crickets who are eventually relieved by the day-cast ensembles of Egyptian geese, sacred ibis, and fiscals, among others... and collectively — with elephants, buffalo, and baboons, oh my — maintain a steady 24-hour acoustic rhythm that circles around the crater in echoes. Here's an audio clip of an elephant herd matriarch at odds with a not-so-coy buffalo about who has right-of-way to the sunny-side of the lake for the day’s last drink. (volume up)

Over two and half days I saw no other people at Lake Paraside - only a pair of rangers on my way in and out. One of the largest tuskers ever known in Kenya lived in Marsabit National Park, Ahmed. His legendary status, cemented by his huge frame and 70kg tusks, goes back to the 1960s when word spread throughout Kenya of a giant elephant in the north, so long were his tusks that they would drag on the ground as he walked. In the 1970s, documentaries were made, further elevating his status to an international pop icon. All of this compelled President Jomo Kenyatta to provide Ahmed with his own protective detail: two armed guards on 24-hour watch. When Ahmed died at 55 years, a nation mourned, and plans were soon made to preserve Ahmed’s body for future Kenyans to see for themselves. “The King of Marsabit” is today at the Kenya National Museum in Nairobi.

There's one 'official' campsite at Lake Paradise, or "big sweet water crater". It's a good spot for several tents, but if you're few and neat, there’s a better one. The special campsite is behind the tree line on the northwestern edge of the lake. If it’s been raining, it’s a slog to get there. On the map below, it's marked 'special', which typically means you need a reservation, but I didn't have one, and I don't think you need one really: there was no one else there. The header photo on this page is taken from the park's lake viewpoint, on the road, directly above the special campsite. In the distance in that photo is an opening in the trees on the opposite side of the lake, and a solitary tree in the middle of that opening closer to the water's edge. That's where I camped (yellow circle on the map below), and that tree will provide shade for you and your lawn-chair safari.

I made the mistake of going on what I thought would be a "scenic" drive around the park on its eastern edge. This was a waste of time as it didn't provide any gratifying views of the landscape or wildlife.

The view of the lake from that lone tree is perfect. Elevated, it affords a panoramic vantage point to see everything, unlike the special campsite which sits, as mentioned, behind the trees and is a 25m trot on a rocky path to better the view.

My reasoning for the lone-tree spot was two-fold. One, the view's great. Two, since everything that visits the water emerges from somewhere through the tree line, I wasn't interested in sitting alone in a dark grove waiting for something to flop onto my lap on its way for a drink. Also, the baboons keep to the western edge of the lake and so little concern of sticky fingers grabbing my stuff and scampering off. On this map, the road into the crater enters through that clearing, so it's the first spot you come upon as you approach the crater.

Marsabit, or "mountain of cold", is certainly much cooler than where I was just before, Samburu National Reserve. T'was nice to wear layers in the cool morning, like a misty Oregon campout, and the third day included an early fog roll-over above the lake.

If in need of provisions before going into the park, there's a market, Basmart, on the right side of the A2 as you enter Marsabit town from the south. It's adjacent to the Total petrol station. A bit further, another couple hundred meters or so (and at the next right turn as you move east into town), is the main road to Ahmed Gate. There's a Shell station on that corner. If you need some of those mentioned Tuskers, you can get them by the case from the Saku Beer Agency a hundred meters past the Shell station on your way to the park entrance, on the left side of the road. (The Marsabit NP map, btw, was available only at the Ahmed gate, and not the more informal Karare gate.) The road conditions in the park, in October, are good, easy in, easy out.

Of everywhere I've camped in Kenya, this place is among the best... no menacing monkeys, no people doing nonsense (see Hell's Gate post), and enough inquisitiveness on both sides of the tent to maintain a steady cycle of awe. Whether you go to camp there or not, don't forget, above all else, to bring something to sit on. You'll be happy you spent as many hours as possible on the edge of Lake Paradise, and, I believe, leave with full appreciation of the lawn-chair safari. Kids? Yes!

When you return home from Marsabit you’ll tell your friends and their friends about what happened here. Chances are good they’ve never been, and, sadly, like most everybody else, will never go, but you’ll try to convince them anyway. Marsabit is far off the tourist circuit, and with so many other spectacular Kenyan parks more readily accessible, visitation will remain low. But its lack of popularity is your benefit. And the drive is fabulous on what is possibly Kenya’s best road from Archer’s Post to Moyale.

As Kenyan long-distance runner Jalis Lukong enthusiastically said during an interview, describing the moment he looked over his shoulder and realized victory was imminent in the 2013 Kass FM marathon, “no peepol, no peepol, noooo. And I happi.” Marsabit... take your lawn-chair safari to the next level.