Eliye Springs

Eliye Springs is the one place on the western shore of Lake Turkana where fresh water comes out of the ground, and the result is a strip of doum palms, sand dunes and pale beach along the edge of a desert lake. It is where most independent travellers on this side of Turkana stay, and it has an early human fossil to its name that almost nothing written for visitors mentions.

Where It Is and What Makes It Work

Eliye sits on the western shore near the mouth of the Turkwel River, about 50 kilometres east of Lodwar and roughly 40 kilometres south of Kalokol. Distances quoted for it range from 50 to 65 kilometres depending on the route described, which is worth knowing when a transfer time is being estimated.

The springs themselves are the reason anything is here. They produce lush vegetation along a section of otherwise barren lakeshore and supply fresh drinking water to a resident community of roughly five thousand people. The doum palms they support are how the place reads on approach: a green line in a landscape with nothing else in it. Behind the beach are sand dunes, and the largest gives the view along the lake that appears in most photographs of the western shore. The beach is sand rather than the black lava of much of the eastern side, which is why Eliye feels so different from Loiyangalani across the water.

The springs have had water quality problems. Contamination including E. coli has been reported in the spring water, attributed to neglect of the infrastructure. Drinking water should be carried or treated, and this should not be assumed to be a clean municipal supply because it looks like an oasis.

The Eliye Springs Cranium

In 1986 Günter Bräuer and Richard Leakey published a preliminary report on a fossil human cranium from Eliye Springs, catalogued KNM-ES 11693. It is a well preserved and heavily mineralised skull, discussed ever since as an archaic form of Homo sapiens, with a mosaic of archaic and more modern features that different analyses have placed in different relationships to other African fossils.

The interesting part, for anyone reading dates in travel copy, is what the original report says about age. The specimen came from reworked deposits, sediment that had been moved and redeposited, so it cannot be located stratigraphically, and Bräuer and Leakey said so explicitly. Age estimates quoted for it elsewhere rest on comparison with other material rather than on the ground the skull came out of.

There is nothing to see at Eliye on this account: no marked locality, no monument and no display, and the specimen belongs to the National Museums of Kenya. It is noted here because a fossil whose own describers said it could not be dated stratigraphically is a useful antidote to the confident numbers attached to everything else in this basin. See archaeological tours in Kenya.

What There Is to Do

Very little, and that is the appeal. A day here runs early and late with the middle hours out of the sun.

• The beach and the dune. Walking the shore and climbing the dune behind it for the long view over the lake is what most people come for.
• Boats. Local boats run from the shore for fishing or for time on the water. The wind gets up through the day, so morning is the working window.
• The fishing community. This is a working Turkana shoreline, and the landing beaches are the most interesting thing on foot. How to approach that respectfully is covered under Turkana cultural experiences.
• The night sky. There is effectively no light pollution here, which is the subject of stargazing in Kenya.

Central Island National Park is normally reached from Kalokol rather than from Eliye.

Swimming, Crocodiles and Honest Caution

People do swim at Eliye, and the warm clear water is part of why the place has a following. Lake Turkana also holds a very large crocodile population, and its island parks are described by the Kenya Wildlife Service as major crocodile breeding grounds.

Those two facts sit together uncomfortably and the resolution is local rather than general. Which stretches of shore are used and which are not is knowledge held by the people who live on the beach, and it changes. Take that guidance exactly, from residents rather than from a brochure, and do not swim at dawn, at dusk or away from where people are.

Getting There and Staying

Lodwar is the gateway, and it carries the only scheduled commercial flights anywhere in the Turkana basin. Turkana County Government gives the road distance from Nairobi through Eldoret and Kitale as 640 kilometres on tarmac; flying instead removes the longest drive in Kenya from the plan and makes a three or four night trip realistic. The last stretch from Lodwar to Eliye is unsurfaced and is the part that needs the vehicle, with high clearance essential and four-wheel drive the sensible default after rain. A sand airstrip near Eliye takes small chartered aircraft.

Accommodation is on the beach, in lodge and camp form rather than hotel form: banda and boma style rooms facing the water and a campsite among the palms on the dunes. Standards are basic and power, water and mobile coverage are all intermittent, which is consistent with what the place is rather than a failure of it. Carry far more water than seems necessary plus rehydration salts, treat sun cover as more important than warm clothing, and bring cash in small denominations.

Questions Travellers Ask About Eliye Springs