OUR PLANET
Laikipia Plateau
Lamu Island
Discover a recent conservation success where former farmland
has been opened up as game sanctuaries and stocked with big
game including the Big Five: elephant, buffalo, lion, rhino and
leopard. The old farmsteads have been converted into delightful,
luxurious accommodation (www.laikipia.org).
Lamu Town is an old Swahili city with many historic
mosques and fine old Arab houses with impressive carved
wooden doors: highlights include the Lamu Museum, the
Swahili House Museum and the Fortress.
Masai Mara National Reserve
Opened in 1974, the Maasai Mara National Reserve is the most popular
game park in Kenya. Managed by the Maasai tribe, the area is named after
this group of people who first migrated to South Kenya from the Nile Valley
in the mid-17th century. The Maasai herdsmen are nomadic people who do
not believe in the concept of land ownership and choose instead to live in
harmony with the wildlife grazing in the area. The reserve, which occupies a
320-square-kilometre 124-square-mile) chunk of the famous Serengeti plains,
is inhabited by many of Africa's most popular wild animals, including lions,
cheetahs, elephants, leopards, black rhinos and hippos. There are also over
500 resident birds in the park including ostrich, lark, sunbird and 57 species
of birds of prey. The area is famous for rolling grassland and for the Mara
River, which runs through the reserve from north to south. It is also the place
for one of nature's best spectacles - the annual migration from the dry plains
of Tanzania of thousands of wildebeest crossing crocodile-infested waters in
order to reach more fertile grazing.
Mount Kenya National Park
Mount Kenya, which is an extinct volcano sitting on the Equator, is Africa's
second highest mountain and stands at a height of 5199m (17,058ft).
Opened as the Mount Kenya National Park in 1949, the mountain has been
revered by local inhabitants for generations and is the official home of
'Ngai', the Kikuyu tribe's Supreme Being. The snowy peak of the volcano
was first sighted by an outsider in 1849 - the missionary Johann Ludwig
Krapf - although the idea that there could be snow on the Equator was not
believed until the British geographer Halford John Mackinder reached the
summit in 1899. The park itself, which covers an area of 600 sq km (232 sq
miles), offers exotic mountain scenery, starting with upland forest near the
bottom and progressing to mountain forest, bamboo forests and glacier peaks.
A wide variety of wildlife inhabits the park, some unique to it, including
Sykes and Colobus monkeys, buffalo, elephants, black rhinos, leopards, the
elusive Bongo antelopes and giant forest hogs. It is also home to many species
of birds such as the giant kingfisher, olive pigeons and red-fronted parrots.
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