Camel Safaris in Kenya

A camel safari in Kenya is a walking safari with a support train. The camels carry the camp, the water and the kit; the travellers walk, and ride only when they want to. That single fact reorders everything else about the trip, because a party that moves at walking pace through unfenced country needs permission to be there, people who know the ground, and somewhere to sleep that did not exist the day before.

These trips belong to northern Kenya. They run on the Laikipia plateau and north into Samburu country, across a patchwork of private ranches, community conservancies and grazing land where the camel is not a tourist prop but a working animal that has been there far longer than the safari industry.

What a camel safari actually is

The common misconception is that a camel safari means riding a camel all day. It rarely does. On most Kenyan camel safaris the animals are pack animals: they carry tents, bedrolls, water drums, kitchen boxes and the day packs, walking in a train behind or ahead of the guests. One or two riding camels travel with the group for anyone who wants a break, and most people find a few minutes in the saddle is enough, because a camel's gait is not comfortable for the unpractised.

A typical day covers somewhere between ten and twenty kilometres, split around the heat. The group walks in the early morning, reaches the next camp for lunch, rests through the middle of the day and often walks again in the late afternoon. The camp itself moves: the crew strikes it after breakfast and rebuilds it at the next site, so the tents are up and the water is hot by the time the walkers arrive.

The wildlife experience is different in kind from a game drive. Sightings are fewer and harder won, and the animals are aware of the party long before it is aware of them. What replaces volume is detail: tracks, dung, a bird call that tells the guide something, the argument about what passed here last night. It is closer to a walking safari than to anything else, and camels are what make a walking safari possible over multiple days and long distances.

Why Laikipia and Samburu

The access model is the story here, and it explains why camel safaris exist in northern Kenya and almost nowhere else in the country.

Kenya's national parks are run on rules designed around vehicles. Walking is restricted, off-road movement is prohibited, and nobody is camping wherever the day ends. Laikipia is not a national park. It is a mosaic of private conservancies, group ranches and community land, and the landowners set their own terms. Those terms generally permit walking, riding, moving on foot at night and fly-camping, because the land is managed as a working landscape rather than as a protected area with gates.

North of Laikipia the same logic extends into Samburu County, where community conservancies hold large tracts of rangeland and the route of a safari is negotiated with the communities whose grazing it crosses. A camel safari there is not a product that sits on top of the land; it is an arrangement with the people who use it. Operators with long-standing agreements can run point-to-point routes across several landholdings, which is why the well-established outfits tend to work the same country year after year.

The terrain helps too. This is semi-arid country of sand rivers, or luggas, dry acacia bush, rocky ridges and, further north, the forested slopes of the Mathews Range. It is walkable, the water points are known, and the camel is the local answer to carrying loads across it.

Who guides these trips

Camel safaris are guided by Samburu and Laikipia Maasai staff, usually working with the same operator for years, alongside a professional guide who handles the wildlife and safety side. The camel handlers are a separate crew again, and on most trips the handlers are the ones who decide where the animals graze and when they move.

That staffing is the reason a camel safari reads as a cultural experience as well as a wilderness one, without any of the staged elements that the phrase usually implies. Conversation on the walk, the route chosen, the reading of tracks and the evening around the fire are all being led by people from the country being crossed. Travellers who want that dimension made explicit can look at Samburu cultural experiences alongside the walking itself.

How a camel safari is put together

• Length. Most trips run from three to eight nights. Shorter overnight versions exist from a fixed camp and give a taste rather than the real thing, because the point of the format is covering ground.
• Camp. Fly-camping, meaning light tents put up fresh each night, with bucket showers and a long-drop. Some operators run heavier mobile camps with more comfort and correspondingly less mobility.
• Pace. Set by the group, within reason. Routes are adapted to fitness, interests and the season rather than fixed in advance.
• Group size. Small. The logistics scale badly, and a large walking party sees less.
• Children. Family versions are common in Laikipia, with shorter days and more riding.

Fitness, and who this suits

The fitness requirement is real but modest: the ability to walk comfortably for two to four hours on uneven ground, twice a day, for several days in a row, in heat. There is no altitude problem, no technical terrain and no daily deadline. The people who struggle are those who arrive without having walked much at home and those who underestimate the sun.

The people who get the most from it are usually those who have already done a conventional safari and found the vehicle limiting. It also suits travellers who want distance and solitude rather than sightings, and it is one of the few safari formats where the absence of other tourists is close to guaranteed.

It is a poor choice for a first and only Kenyan safari if the goal is the Big Five. A camel safari in the north will not produce the wildlife density of the Maasai Mara, and it is usually run as the second week of a trip rather than the first.

Season and conditions

Northern Kenya is drier than the rest of the country and the walking seasons are correspondingly long. The main constraints are heat and rain rather than a wildlife calendar.

Whatever the month, the working day is built around avoiding the middle hours. Anyone who has only walked in temperate countries should assume the heat, not the distance, will be the limiting factor.

The Maralal camel derby

Camels in northern Kenya also have a competitive life. The International Camel Derby at Maralal, the main town of Samburu County, has grown into a multi-day festival with amateur and professional races over different distances, plus a cycling event over the same rough country. Amateurs can enter, which is the point of it: the field routinely includes visitors who had never sat on a camel before that week.

The derby moves in the calendar and has been held in different months in different years, so anyone planning a trip around it should confirm the dates for that year rather than relying on a published month. It sits well with a camel safari in the same region, and it is one of the few occasions when Maralal fills with people from across the northern counties.

What to bring

• Broken-in walking boots or trail shoes. New footwear on a multi-day walk is the single commonest mistake.
• Long, light trousers and long sleeves. Thorn scrub and sun both argue for covering up rather than dressing down.
• A wide-brimmed hat, high-factor sunscreen and lip protection. The equatorial sun at altitude is harsher than the temperature suggests.
• A soft bag rather than a hard case, because everything is loaded onto an animal. Operators impose a weight limit per person for the same reason.
• Binoculars, a head torch and more electrolyte sachets than seems necessary.
• Warm layers for the evening. Laikipia sits high and the nights are genuinely cold.

How it compares with the other slow safaris

Kenya offers several ways to travel at walking pace, and they are not interchangeable. A walking safari based at a camp covers the country around that camp and returns each night. A horseback safari covers far more ground per day and gets closer to plains game, but demands genuine riding ability. A camel safari sits between them: more range than walking alone, no technical skill required, and the slowest and most complete immersion of the three.

Travellers combining formats usually pair northern walking with a fly-in to the Mara or a coastal stretch, since the transfer from Laikipia to anywhere else is long by road. Fly-in safaris to the airstrips at Nanyuki, Loisaba and Lewa make that practical.

Common questions