Kenya is a beautiful country and one of the best places in the world for wildlife safaris. The landscapes vary from wide open savannahs to desert to vast lakes to lush mountain forests. Here you will find an incredible array of wildlife.
Kenya: Ol Pejeta Conservancy
🦏 Kenya: Ol Pejeta Conservancy
Ol Pejeta is a private conservancy that sits in the shadow of Mount Kenya, which, for those keeping score, is the second-highest mountain in the country and a fair bit trickier to get up than Kilimanjaro, despite being shorter. We also found ourselves bang on the equator here, which always gives us a daft little thrill, even though we knew full well there’d be no dotted white line painted across the ground waiting for us. Ol Pejeta began life, as so much of this part of Kenya did, as a colonial-era cattle ranch. It was bought in the early 1940s by Lord Delamere, one of those larger-than-life British settlers who shaped so much of Kenya’s farming history, and from 1949 it was run by John and Jane Kenyon, who built it up from a modest 57,000 acres into a sprawling 90,000-acre beef operation. Over the decades that followed it passed through a string of colourful owners, including, at one point, the notorious international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who apparently kept a rather grand ranch house here that’s now used as a lodge. By the late 1960s, with Kenya in the grip of a serious poaching crisis and elephant and rhino numbers collapsing, the then owners, Lonrho Africa, decided enough was enough, and in 1988 they set aside part of the ranch as the Sweetwaters Game Reserve, a sanctuary specifically for black rhino. In 2004, the whole place was bought outright by the UK-based charity Fauna & Flora International, backed by a hefty fifteen-million-dollar donation from the Arcus Foundation, working alongside the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, and that’s when Ol Pejeta as we know it today, a proper not-for-profit trust, came into being.
These days, alongside all that history, Ol Pejeta is one of the best places anywhere to see both black and white rhino in one trip. It’s also, rather remarkably, home to the last two Northern white rhinos left on the entire planet. Both are females, a mother and her daughter, called Najin and Fatu. There used to be a male too, a chap called Sudan, who’d been flown in from a zoo in the Czech Republic back in 2009 along with three others, in what was a genuinely last-ditch attempt to get the species breeding again in something like its natural habitat. Sadly, Sudan died in March 2018, at the grand old age of forty-five, after his health went downhill rather badly, and that left just Najin and Fatu, the very last of their kind on Earth. Worse still, neither female is able to carry a calf naturally; Najin’s knees are too weak to bear the strain, and Fatu has a uterine condition that rules out a pregnancy. It really is a desperately big problem. The conservancy does have a plan, mind, and a properly ambitious one at that. Working with an international team of scientists called the BioRescue Project, they’ve harvested eggs from both females and used preserved sperm from now-deceased Northern white males, Sudan included, to create viable embryos in the laboratory. The idea is to implant these into Southern white rhino females, who’ll act as surrogate mothers, in the hope of bringing the Northern white rhino back from the very brink of extinction. It is, by any measure, one of the most extraordinary conservation efforts going on anywhere in the world right now, and we felt genuinely privileged just to be in the same enclosure as those two old girls.
🐘 An Afternoon Among the Big Beasts
We had an afternoon game drive booked in and set off at around three o’clock. It wasn’t long at all before we came across a white female rhino with her calf, and it really was rather sweet watching them graze together out on the savannah, the little one occasionally nipping in for a suckle while its mother carried on chewing as if nothing much was happening. The next stop on our drive was a fair bit less cheerful, a rhino cemetery, set out on an open plain with a single tree standing at its centre. Scattered around it were dozens of small headstones, each one bearing the name of a rhino that had been killed by poachers, and a brief note of how. It made for sober reading, and we stood there for a good while in silence, which isn’t something either of us does often.
The end of the day was fast approaching, so we pressed on to see what else we could find before the light went. We rounded a corner and came face to face with an eland, the largest antelope in the whole of Africa and also one of the shyest, and it hung about just long enough for us to get a decent photo before bounding off. A little further along we spotted a hartebeest, the first one we’d seen anywhere on our entire trip through Kenya or Uganda, which felt like a proper little win. One thing we’d been keen to do was visit the sanctuary area where the rhino breeding programme is actually run from, and as we pulled up there were two white rhinos already drinking at a watering station, which was a nice bonus we hadn’t been banking on.
Ol Pejeta has built a huge enclosure that’s home to the two remaining female Northern white rhinos, and it’s so vast that actually spotting them in it is something of a challenge in itself. Instead, we went off to meet a black rhino called Baraka, who’d been blinded in one eye and could no longer survive on his own out in the wider conservancy, so the rangers took him in and now keep him safe in his own private enclosure, where he does sterling work as part of their education programme. Black rhinos as a rule are shy creatures and can be properly bad-tempered, but Baraka has grown thoroughly used to people, so when the rangers call his name he trots straight over to the fence without any fuss at all. We were encouraged to feed him a bit of grass, and he was wonderfully gentle taking it from our hands. His skin is tough as old boots, as you’d expect, but we got to touch him behind the ears, which, rather surprisingly, was incredibly soft. We said our goodbyes to Baraka and headed off towards Sweetwaters for the night.
🌅 Dawn on the Equator
We’d agreed the night before to take an early pre-breakfast game drive, and although we’d been dreading a cold night, it turned out our tent was perfectly cosy. A comfortable bed and a hot water bottle saw us through to a proper night’s sleep, but even so, hauling ourselves out of bed before dawn was no small feat. We must have looked like a pair of zombies done up in safari gear as we clambered into the Land Cruiser for the pre-dawn drive.
It didn’t take long for us to get into the swing of things. As we’d discussed the evening before, the plan was to grab some dawn photographs at the equator monument within the conservancy, ideally with Mount Kenya looming dramatically in the background. The weather, unfortunately, wasn’t playing along, as the summit was wrapped entirely in cloud, but we still managed some good fun shots for the album regardless.
From the equator monument we carried on out onto the game drive proper. We passed the dried-up waterhole where we’d seen a lioness and her two cubs the evening before, and sure enough, they were still there. The cubs kept us thoroughly entertained with their antics for some time, tumbling about while their mother looked on with what can only be described as supreme indifference. Eventually the little family wandered off, and so did we. Raphe, our driver, took us on round and we watched Ol Pejeta properly waking up for the day. We stopped for a good look whenever we came across elephants or giraffes, which, frankly, never gets old, however many times you’ve seen them.
🐵 The Chimps of Sweetwaters
The plan had been to visit the chimpanzee sanctuary just before breakfast. We turned up at eight o’clock sharp, only to discover it doesn’t open until half past. So off we went for a quick additional game drive to fill the gap. Back at the gates at eight-thirty, there were already a couple of vehicles queuing, and a little later than advertised, we were finally let in.
We were introduced to a thoroughly nice chap called David, who was to be our guide for the visit. Before we got anywhere near the chimps themselves, he took us round a small exhibition explaining the purpose of the sanctuary. This is one of several such sanctuaries originally set up under the influence of the celebrated researcher and conservationist Jane Goodall, whose decades of work studying chimpanzees in Tanzania did so much to change how the world understood our closest living relatives. The Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary itself was established here in 1993, and it remains the only place in the whole of Kenya where you can see chimpanzees, as the species isn’t native to the country at all. Every single chimp here has been rescued from somewhere in Africa or beyond, having been kept illegally as pets, often in truly dreadful conditions. In the exhibition there was a tiny cage in which one particular chimpanzee had been cruelly confined for eight long years. It was so small that the only way the poor creature could find any relief was to stand upright on two legs, which is a thoroughly unnatural posture for a chimpanzee to hold for any length of time. Karen climbed inside it to show just how small it really was, and she had a proper squeeze to manage it.
David then walked us outside to the enclosures where the chimps actually live. There are two of these, each running to many acres, and the population is split between them, with the longer-established residents in one and the more recent arrivals in the other. There are over thirty chimpanzees here in total. In the early days they were simply left to their own devices, with the result that some babies were born right there at the sanctuary, but the team soon realised this wasn’t a sustainable approach, since these chimps can never be returned to the wild and the population would quickly outgrow the available space. These days, some of the chimps have been sterilised, and others are given a form of birth control, just in case the policy on sterilisation ever changes.
When we first arrived, there wasn’t a chimp in sight, and frankly there’s more than enough space in there for them to hide if they fancy it. After David did a spot of calling, several eventually wandered into view. The sanctuary used to feed the chimps to draw them over, which they no longer do, but the chimps still seem to associate a human voice with the promise of food. Since Covid you can no longer get right up to the fence the way visitors once could, and in any case several of the chimps simply don’t care for humans, for reasons known only to themselves, and will happily lob things at you, poop very much included.
We moved round to another part of the enclosure alongside an American family who were also visiting. The chimps followed along and were soon joined by a youngster who, as David explained, had been something of an ‘accident’. This young chap was clearly enjoying himself immensely, teasing his elders, belting about the place and throwing himself into forward rolls, almost as if he were putting on a show purely for our benefit. Oddly enough, the children in the American group couldn’t have cared less, having found a colony of ants that had grabbed their full attention instead. I rather think if I were their parents, having just forked out several thousand dollars for the privilege, I’d have been more than a touch annoyed.
Anyway, it was time to say cheerio to the chimps and head back to Sweetwaters. We only just managed to catch breakfast before collecting our things from the room and setting off for our next stop, Lake Naivasha.
In summary …
When you visit Ol Pejeta Conservancy you have the opportunity to see members of the Big 5 – lion, buffalo, elephant, leopard and both the endangered black and white rhino, as well as the threatened jackson’s hartebeests and grevy’s zebras. The conservancy is home to the largest black rhino sanctuary in East Africa, and you can also observe both the northern and southern endangered white rhinos.
Planning your visit to Ol Pejeta Conservancy
| 📍 Location | Laikipia County, Kenya — between Nanyuki and Nyahururu, on the foothills of Mount Kenya, accessed via Rongai and Serat Gates |
|---|---|
| 🕖 Opening Times | Daily, 7:00 AM – 7:00 PM |
| 📞 Phone | +254 707 187 141 |
| ℹ️ Notes | Cashless entry only — book online in advance. Day-trip tickets are single-entry; overnight guest tickets are valid for 24 hours. No entry permitted after 7:00 PM. Single-use plastics are banned on the conservancy. |
🎟️ Entry Fees
| Category | Adult | Child | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-Resident | Higher rate applies | Reduced rate applies | Children aged 3–11 |
| Resident/Citizen | Lower rate applies | Reduced rate applies | Proof of residency/citizenship required |
| Student Groups | Concession rate | — | Must pre-book; minimum 10 students, 2 teachers free |
(Note: exact fee amounts in KES/USD change periodically — best confirmed directly via the official booking site or by contacting reservations.)
🚗 Getting There
Ol Pejeta is roughly a 3–4 hour drive north from Nairobi via Nyeri and Nanyuki, or accessible by scheduled domestic flights into Nanyuki Airstrip followed by a short road transfer. Self-drive visitors should use a 4×4, especially in the wet season, and enter only through the Rongai or Serat Gates.
The Best Time to Visit Kenya
☀️ Long Dry Season (June–October)
This is the prime safari season. Rainfall is low, vegetation thins out, and animals gather near water sources, making wildlife easy to spot. The Great Migration reaches the Masai Mara around July and August, with river crossings continuing into September before the herds head back to Tanzania in October. Mornings can be crisp, especially in the highlands.
What to pack: breathable clothing for warm days with a fleece or jumper for cool mornings, neutral-coloured safari wear, a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, sun cream, binoculars, a camera, comfortable walking shoes, and a light rain jacket.
🌴 Short Dry Spell (January–February)
A second, shorter dry window between the rains. Inland it’s hot and sunny, with daytime temperatures often in the high twenties to thirties, while the coast is hot and humid. The landscape is still lush from the short rains, parks are quieter than peak season, and it’s a great time to combine safari with beach time or climbing Mount Kenya.
What to pack: light, breezy clothing, swimwear and a sarong for the coast, a hat and high-factor sun cream, insect repellent, a refillable water bottle, sandals plus sturdier shoes for game drives, and a light layer for cooler evenings.
🌧️ Long Rains (March–May)
The wettest period, especially April, with heavy downpours that can make park roads muddy. The upside is lush, green scenery, dramatic skies, fewer tourists, and the lowest prices of the year. May sees rain settle in further, and coastal weather becomes less beach-friendly.
What to pack: a waterproof jacket and trousers, quick-drying clothing, waterproof boots or shoes, a dry bag or rain cover for camera gear, a compact umbrella, insect repellent, and warm layers for damp evenings.
🍃 Short Rains (November–December)
Showers are brief, usually in the afternoon, leaving plenty of dry, sunny hours either side. Most parks and camps stay open, crowds are thinner, and prices drop. December can turn hot, with wildlife viewing still strong throughout.
What to pack: a packable rain jacket, breathable daywear, a hat and sun cream, comfortable quick-drying shoes, a dry bag for electronics, and a warm layer for cooler evenings.
Summary Table
Overall Best Time to Visit
If you can only pick one window, June to October is the best overall time to visit Kenya, combining dry weather, easy wildlife spotting and the Great Migration. The trade-off is bigger crowds and higher prices, particularly in August. Many seasoned travellers favour September specifically, as it offers excellent weather and game viewing with fewer crowds than peak August. If you’d rather save money and avoid the crowds, the shoulder season of January–February or the rainy months of March–May and November–December offer a quieter, more affordable alternative without sacrificing much in the way of wildlife or scenery.
Sweetwaters Serena Camp
We arrived at Sweetwaters Serena Camp in Ol Pejeta right around lunchtime, just about making it before the kitchen stopped serving, which is fairly typical for us, if we’re honest. We headed straight into the restaurant, and the food was genuinely excellent, proper hearty stuff after a morning bouncing about in the Land Cruiser. As we tucked in, a giraffe sauntered over to the waterhole right beside the lodge for a drink, which is the sort of dinner-and-a-show arrangement you simply don’t get back home in London, however good the restaurant. We sat there with our forks halfway to our mouths just watching it, the way you would if a celebrity wandered into the room.
Sweetwaters takes its name from the original Sweetwaters Game Reserve, set up here back in 1988 as one of the very first dedicated black rhino sanctuaries in this part of Kenya, and the camp itself has grown up alongside that history into something rather grander than the name suggests. To call it a ‘camp’ is, frankly, a bit of a misnomer. We were indeed staying under canvas, in proper safari tents pitched on raised platforms with views straight out over the bush, but that was about as far as the camping experience went. Inside, there was a comfortable bed, an en-suite bathroom with hot running water, and enough soft furnishings to make a hotel room blush. Even calling it glamping felt like rather underselling it. The whole place is unfenced too, so it’s not unusual to hear something large rustling about outside the canvas after dark, which does rather sharpen the senses on the walk back from dinner.
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