Kenya - Laikipia, our home

The Laikipia Plateau

The Laikipia plateau in central Kenya is the last stronghold of romantic East Africa: vast open ranches, shadowed by snow-capped Mount Kenya, home to ethnically diverse communities including the Laikipiak Maasai and Samburu.

These indigenous tribespeople have joined together in partnership with the settlers and ranchers to create a conservation and wildlife haven that spans two million acres (800,000 hectares) of wild savannah.

Map of Laikipia

Fed by the Ewaso Nyiro and Ewaso Narok rivers, Laikipia’s abundant plains have long nurtured exceptional diversity, with traditional resources still very much the mainstay of the community: from wheat and livestock ranching to wildlife conservation and now tourism.

Diversity is the key to Laikipia’s attraction as a tourist destination and hence as an Adventure Education site – there is something for everyone. From adventure, traditional communities, wildlife conservation, field studies, to simply retreating from the world, it’s all here.

The “Big 5” are often seen (rhino, elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo) and the district is home to more endangered mammals than anywhere else in East Africa, protecting half of Kenya’s black rhino in sanctuaries. Laikipia also boasts the biggest herds of elephant (over 3200 at last count) outside the Tsavo National Parks and is the only place to view the endangered Jackson’s Hartebeest.

Wild dog, leopard, lion, cheetah and other predators hunt the plentiful plains game: impala, gazelle, reticulated giraffe, Grevy’s zebra, Somali ostrich, Beisa oryx (endemic to the north of Kenya) and gerenuk.

Laikipia has long fascinated scientists and researchers. Early explorers were greeted with derision and disbelief when they first told of a snow-capped mountain (Mount Kenya), straddling the equator, overlooking the Laikipia plateau.

Today the pioneering spirit continues. Laikipia offers diverse scenery from the edge of the Great Rift Valley, to the peaks of Mount Kenya, with dusty plains and verdant grasslands, interspersed with rocky hills, rivers, and waterholes. The so-called “Ewaso ecosystem” is larger than all of Kenya’s protected areas except Tsavo and has more wildlife than all other parks and reserves except the Maasai Mara.

Reprinted with permission from LWF.

More Laikipia Info

A Maasai woman in Laikipia.

Some Masai children.

Elephant in Laikipia.