Mathews Range

The Mathews Range is a chain of forested mountains rising out of the semi-arid plains of Samburu County in northern Kenya, roughly 320 kilometres from Nairobi. Also known as the Lenkiyio Hills, it runs for around 150 kilometres and reaches 2,688 metres at Warges. Almost all of it lies inside Namunyak, a community conservancy owned and governed by the Samburu people who live around it, and that ownership is not a detail of the story. It is the story.

Community Land, Not a Park

There is no national park here, no Kenya Wildlife Service gate and no national fee schedule. Namunyak Wildlife Conservancy was established in 1995 by Samburu elders and covers a very large area of Samburu County, on the order of 850,000 acres, with the Mathews Range forest at its heart. The Mathews Range Forest Reserve itself covers roughly 940 square kilometres inside it.

Namunyak is a member of the Northern Rangelands Trust, which brings together 47 community conservancies across 6.37 million hectares in Kenya and Uganda, benefiting more than a million people. NRT describes its members as local institutions owned and run by indigenous communities, managed by a democratically elected board and staffed by locals. That is the governance model a visitor is walking into, and it determines who decides what happens on this ground and where the money from a bed night goes.

The practical version is straightforward: grazing rights, conservation and tourism are negotiated among the people who live there, rather than imposed by a wildlife authority on land the state owns. Northern Kenya’s community conservancies are the reason walking, camel travel and camping are possible across this country at all, and the reason a route through it has to be agreed rather than simply driven.

A Forest Island in Dry Country

The reason the Mathews Range exists as a destination is altitude. The plains around it are hot, stony and thinly vegetated. The mountains are high enough to catch cloud, and they carry dense indigenous montane forest, cycad-studded slopes, clear streams and waterfalls that run when the surrounding country has nothing. It is one of the least disturbed forests in northern Kenya, largely because it has never been easy to reach.

The cycads are the range’s signature. Encephalartos tegulaneus, the Kenyan giant cycad, is endemic to Kenya and grows here between about 1,200 and 2,300 metres on steep slopes and exposed rock outcrops. The type specimen came from the Mathews Range, and the species was described from a collection made in May 1954 by Joy Adamson. Cycads are among the oldest seed plants on earth, which gives the forest here a genuinely prehistoric quality that is not marketing language.

Wildlife is forest wildlife rather than plains wildlife and it is correspondingly hard to see. Elephant move through the range and use it as a refuge; the mountains sit on a corridor that connects this country south towards Mount Kenya and the Ngare Ndare forest. Buffalo, greater kudu, colobus monkeys and leopard are present, and over 350 bird species have been recorded. Anyone coming for a game-drive species list will be disappointed. Anyone coming to walk in forest with elephants in it will not.

Walking, Not Driving

This is a walking destination first. The forest is not vehicle country and the value of the place is at the pace of a footpath.

• Forest walks and longer hikes into the montane forest, guided by Samburu who grew up in it
• Walks to waterfalls and river pools, which are the reason many people come
• Fly camping, where a route is walked over several days and camp moves with it
• Camel safaris, which work the country around the range rather than the forest itself
• Birdwatching in a habitat quite unlike anything in the surrounding lowlands
• Cultural visits to Samburu settlements, arranged through the conservancy

The singing wells are the best-known cultural experience in this country. Through the dry months, Samburu warriors dig wells into dry riverbeds, descend as far as ten metres, form a human chain and pass water up by hand for the cattle, singing while they work. Each family has its own call, which the herds recognise. It happens in the dry seasons, roughly July to October and January to March, because it is a response to drought rather than a performance, and it does not happen on demand.

Getting to the Mathews Range

This is remote country and reaching it is the main constraint on a visit. The road approach runs north through Nanyuki or Isiolo and then out onto rough tracks, and the drive from Nairobi is on the order of eight hours. Most travellers fly instead, on scheduled services to Samburu or Lewa Downs followed by a road transfer, or on charters directly to an airstrip in the conservancy.

Accommodation is limited and camps in this country work with the conservancy rather than independently of it, so access is arranged as part of a stay. No entry fee is published for Namunyak or the forest reserve, and because this is community land rather than a national park, the Kenya Wildlife Service schedule does not apply.

The Mathews Range is in Samburu County, not Laikipia. A number of travel sources place it and the properties inside Namunyak in Laikipia, and at least one older reference still uses the pre-2010 provincial scheme. Laikipia is a different landscape several hours to the south-west, and transfer times built on the wrong county will not survive contact with the road.

Where It Fits in a Northern Trip

The Mathews Range is a second-leg destination. It is usually reached after Samburu National Reserve, sometimes after Laikipia, and it works as the point where a northern Kenya trip stops being about game drives and becomes about walking, forest and community country. Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, the community-owned elephant orphanage run by Samburu keepers, is also inside Namunyak.

When to Go

The dry seasons, roughly June to October and January to March, give the firmest tracks, the most reliable access on rough roads and the best chance of seeing the singing wells in use. The rains around April and May and again in November green the forest and fill the waterfalls but make the approach roads difficult, which matters more here than in most of Kenya because the last stretch is unsurfaced. The mountains are cool year-round and cold at night.

Questions Travellers Ask About the Mathews Range