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... ranches between Soysambu and Kedong had more than 10,000 Thomson's gazelles, 11,000 zebras, slightly over 1,000 eland, 1,300 spring hares, 1,200 baboons, 114 colobus monkeys, 70 Sykes monkeys and 208 bushbucks.

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Private Ranches With a Wealth of Game

The Nation (Nairobi)

July 9, 2004
Michael Njuguna
Nairobi

The vast series of ranches found between Lake Nakuru National Park and Kedong in Naivasha are home to more than 40,000 wild animals and countless birds, and offer an ideal destination for a weekend adventure.

If you start off your journey from Nairobi, you can take the road north of Naivasha, next to Delamere's Manera farm, then proceed to Ol Aragwai, Malu, Mbo-i-Kamiti past Kigio, Mwitumberia and Ex-Begg.

Many of the private ranches have not put in place any infrastructure to harness eco-tourism but they have thousands of wild animals on which visitors can feast their eyes from the rough earth roads.

If you have a four-wheel drive vehicle with good ground clearance, you might wish to test your endurance by taking a trip to the rarely visited Crater Lake and Shangri-la, formerly known as Nderit.

A Nakuru resident, Richard Button, who visited the area some years back, says it is almost impossible to get to the Crater Lake using an ordinary saloon car.

And while in Naivasha, you could take a trip to one of the country's smallest National Parks: Hell's Gate. This is one of the few protected areas where visitors are allowed to walk or ride bicycles, and one can get information and guidance from the amiable park warden, Catherine Wekesa.

However, you have to be on the lookout for truculent buffaloes and stealthy leopards, although the latter are not known to attack humans unless provoked.

Conservationist Simon Tomset tried to introduce the Lammergeyer vulture from Ethiopia to Hell's Gate a few years ago, but the project hit a snag when one of the two birds got sucked into a chimney at the nearby KenGen geothermal plant, while the other was killed by a farmer.

Tomset is rearing another pair of the bearded vultures, also known as bone-crushers, and he will be back on the cliffs of Hell's Gate soon to give his experiment another try.

Lord Delamere's Soysambu Ranch, which borders the beautiful Lake Elmentaita, has a tented camp known as Mbweha, tucked away a short distance from the pelican breeding islands.

The pelican flocks that breed here fly to Lake Nakuru, more than 30 kilometres away, every morning to feed on the small tilapia grahami fish in the town's lake. They leave Lake Nakuru shortly before sunset in a spectacular flying formation.

Bookings for the Mbweha Camp must be made in advance and visitors can enjoy a rare night game drive to see nocturnal creatures such as porcupines in their habitat.

Soysambu Ranch has more than 10 giraffes, a sizeable buffalo herd, zebras, Thomson's gazelles (Tommies), leopards, rabbits, hyraxes, warthogs and dikdiks, among other wild animals.

An air and ground game count conducted a few years ago indicated that the ranches between Soysambu and Kedong had more than 10,000 Thomson's gazelles, 11,000 zebras, slightly over 1,000 eland, 1,300 spring hares, 1,200 baboons, 114 colobus monkeys, 70 Sykes monkeys and 208 bushbucks.

When around Lake Elmentaita, you can have lunch at the Elmentaita Lodge, and thereafter a horse ride on the shores of the lake.

The Lake Nakuru National Park, which is only a couple of minutes' drive from Elmentaita, has two tourist class lodges - Lake Nakuru Lodge and the Sarova Lion Hill Lodge. The two resorts offer a quiet atmosphere away from the urban bustle.

Although the Kenya Wildlife Service does not allow visitors to travel within the protected parks after dusk, those putting up at Sarova Lake Nakuru Lodge can take an early morning drive, when the entire area teems with virtually all species of animals.

Kigio Ranch got some Rothschild giraffes from the Kenya Wildlife Service sometime back but I am not sure if they allow visitors without prior notice.

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