Laikipia

Laikipia is the high plateau that runs north and west from the foot of Mount Kenya towards the arid country beyond, and it is the part of Kenya that behaves least like a national park. There is no park here. There is no single gate, no single tariff, no single authority and no single set of rules. What there is instead is a mosaic of large private conservancies, community conservancies and working cattle ranches, each of which decides for itself who may come in, what they may do and what it costs.

That is an awkward thing to write a destination guide about, and it is the whole reason Laikipia is worth the trouble. A traveller does not visit Laikipia the way they visit Amboseli. They pick a property, and the property is the destination. This page exists to help make that choice, and then to hand over to the guide for whichever place wins.

What Laikipia Is, and Why It Has No National Park

The plateau sits between roughly 1,700 and 2,000 metres, high enough that the nights are genuinely cold and the days rarely brutal, and high enough that most of it is outside the worst of the malaria belt. Physically it is open grassland and whistling thorn giving way, as the ground drops north and west, to rocky ridges, sand rivers and dry acacia bush. To the south and east it butts against the Mount Kenya forest. To the north it runs out into the country that leads to Samburu.

The absence of a park is a historical accident with enormous consequences. Laikipia was carved into large settler ranches in the colonial period and stayed in large blocks afterwards. When wildlife tourism arrived, the land was already privately or communally held, so conservation happened through landowners rather than through gazettement. The result is that almost all of the conservation estate here is owned by somebody: a family, a trust, a community, a foundation, or a company limited by guarantee.

The Laikipia Conservancies Association, formed in 2019 to knit those holdings into one connected landscape, records 32 member conservancies protecting just over one million acres. The Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association, which keeps the national register, records the same association differently, at 24 conservancies covering 350,000 hectares, with 11,919 member households and 512 wildlife scouts. Both bodies publish their own figure and they do not agree, which is itself a fair description of how loosely this landscape is stitched together.

Because none of Laikipia is a Kenya Wildlife Service park, the national park fee schedule does not apply anywhere on the plateau. Each conservancy sets and publishes its own charges, or does not publish them at all. Anyone budgeting from a KWS tariff for Laikipia is working from the wrong document.

What Conservancy Land Allows That a National Park Does Not

This is the practical payoff and the reason experienced travellers come back to Laikipia rather than to the reserves.

• Walking safaris are routine rather than exceptional. Multi-day walking routes between camps are an established format here in a way they are almost nowhere else in Kenya.
• Night game drives run without the 6pm gate constraint that governs park land, because there is no gate to be outside of.
• Horseback safaris have a longer tradition in Laikipia than anywhere else in East Africa, and several properties keep serious stables.
• Camel safaris work the northern end of the plateau and continue on into Samburu country.
• Cycling among wildlife is permitted on some conservancies and is flatly impossible inside a park.
• Off-road driving is allowed on many properties, which changes what a sighting looks like and matters enormously for wildlife photography.
• Vehicle numbers at a sighting are capped by the landowner rather than by luck, so the queue that defines peak season in the Maasai Mara does not form.

The trade is that none of this is free-form. Every one of those activities happens because a private or community landowner permits it on their ground, under their rules, usually only for guests staying on the property. Laikipia is not a place to turn up and see what happens.

Choosing Between the Laikipia Conservancies

The properties differ more from each other than the marketing suggests. The table below is a routing device rather than a ranking, and each entry leads to a full guide.

Two more places belong to this landscape without sitting on the plateau. Nanyuki is the town everything is arranged from and the airstrip most people land at. The Mathews Range, further north again and on community land in Samburu County, is where the same northern trip usually continues.

Wildlife on the Laikipia Plateau

Laikipia’s species list is northern rather than southern, and the difference is the point. This is dry-country wildlife: reticulated giraffe rather than Maasai giraffe, Beisa oryx, gerenuk, and the animals that make the plateau nationally significant.

Grevy’s zebra. The Grevy’s Zebra Trust puts the global population at 3,042 animals from its 2018 count, of which 2,812 were in Kenya and 230 in Ethiopia, against roughly 15,000 in the late 1970s. The species survives in three Kenyan counties: Samburu, Marsabit and Laikipia. Seeing one is not a bonus sighting here; it is one of the reasons to come.

Black rhino. The plateau holds a large share of Kenya’s black rhino, distributed across separately protected sanctuaries rather than in one place. Kenya Wildlife Service puts the national rhino total at approximately 2,102 animals: 1,059 black, 1,041 southern white and 2 northern white. The two northern whites are on Ol Pejeta.

Elephant. The Nature Conservancy describes the corridor running through northern Laikipia as carrying Kenya’s second-largest elephant population. The movement is seasonal and cross-property, which is precisely why the conservancies spend so much effort dropping internal fences.

Reticulated giraffe. Assessed as Endangered, with the Giraffe Conservation Foundation putting the population at 20,901. Common across Laikipia and easy to take for granted.

Predators are present throughout but worked differently from the reserves. Lion densities are lower than in the Mara, African wild dog packs are viable across several conservancies, and leopard sightings on the better-monitored properties are more reliable than the habitat would suggest.

Who Owns Laikipia, and Where the Gate Money Goes

A traveller should understand this before choosing, because the ownership model is not cosmetic and the models genuinely differ.

• Not-for-profit conservancies. Ol Pejeta runs a commercial ranching company alongside a not-for-profit conservancy company steered by a voluntary board. Lewa has operated as a not-for-profit since 1995.
• Community trusts. Loisaba’s property and operating companies were transferred to the Loisaba Community Trust in December 2014, in a transaction facilitated by The Nature Conservancy and Space for Giants.
• Family-held land turned protected area. Borana Ranch has been in the Dyer family’s care since 1984 and was formally recognised by Kenya Wildlife Service and the Ministry of Tourism as a gazetted protected area in 2022.
• Foundation-backed private land. Segera is owned by Jochen Zeitz and run on the Zeitz Foundation’s four-pillar framework of conservation, culture, community and commerce.
• Trust-held private land. Ol Jogi is held in trust and functions as a private conservancy with a rescue and veterinary operation attached.

Community conservancies on and around the plateau, several of them affiliated to the Northern Rangelands Trust, are a fifth category again, owned and governed by the people who graze the land. Il Ngwesi, on Borana’s boundary, is the best-known Laikipia example.

Getting to Laikipia

The road approach is the Nairobi to Nanyuki run, roughly four hours on tarmac by way of Thika, Karatina and Naro Moru, with the last stretch on to whichever gate is wanted. This is the same road that serves Mount Kenya and continues north to Isiolo, which makes Laikipia unusually easy to bolt on to something else.

By air, fly-in safaris use scheduled services from Wilson Airport in Nairobi into Nanyuki and into individual conservancy airstrips. Flying makes far more sense than it does in southern Kenya, because the distances between northern properties are long and the roads between them are not.

Self-drive works for the conservancies that admit day visitors and does not work for the ones that do not, which is most of them. That distinction, more than road quality, is what determines whether a self-drive Laikipia trip is possible at all.

When to Go

The plateau is a year-round destination in a way the seasonal parks are not, because there is no migration to time a trip around and the altitude moderates the heat. The long rains fall around April and May and the short rains around November, and both are a genuine consideration for walking, riding and cycling rather than for driving. The dry months from late June to October and again from January to March concentrate game around water and give the most reliable ground underfoot.

Birding peaks in and just after the rains, and Laikipia’s mix of highland and dry-country habitat makes it a stronger birdwatching destination than its reputation suggests. Clear high-altitude nights also make the plateau one of the better places in Kenya for stargazing.

Fees, Access and the Rules That Change at Every Gate

There is no Laikipia-wide fee. Ol Pejeta publishes a full tariff and runs open gates. Lewa, Borana, Loisaba, Segera and Ol Jogi do not publish a conservancy fee at all, because access is bundled into staying on the property and arranged through the camp rather than at a gate.

Practically, that splits the plateau in two. One conservancy can be visited for a day by anyone who turns up with a ticket. The rest require a bed. Anyone planning a Laikipia trip around day visits should confirm the position property by property before committing, because the pattern is the opposite of what park-shaped expectations predict.

Where Laikipia Stops Being Laikipia

The plateau shades into other country in every direction and the boundaries in travel writing are looser than the county lines. Lewa and Borana sit on the northern foothills of Mount Kenya on the edge of the Laikipia plain, and are conventionally sold as part of this landscape even though the drive from them runs towards Isiolo rather than Nanyuki. The Mathews Range and Namunyak are firmly in Samburu County and belong to the northern trip, not this one. Samburu National Reserve, Buffalo Springs and Shaba are county-run reserves on their own tariffs.

The common northern itinerary runs Nairobi to Laikipia to Samburu, or Laikipia to the Mathews Range and back out through Isiolo. The useful mental model is that Laikipia is where the private land ends and the community rangelands begin.

Questions Travellers Ask About Laikipia

Safaris That Visit Laikipia

Every safari listed here that visits Laikipia. Each is sold and run by an independent tour company. This site lists them and passes on enquiries; it takes no booking and charges you nothing.

Walking Safaris

Laikipia Rhino Conservancies & Samburu

by Ancient Africa Safaris

From $6,000 per person

View Safari

Open the full Laikipia listing