Amboseli National Park

During our two days here, the park was a bit quiet. We see the usual, but not the big beast like lions etc. Though the bird scene here is amazing!

Amazing views of Mt Kilimanjaro. However game was scarce and area was swampy. Very high mosquito bite eating.

Heavy rains had washed out some of the park roads right before we arrived so some of the park was flooded and animal viewing was not what it could have been.

Not as many animals as Masai Mara, different much drier terrain.

This is a place that it worth to visit if you have some extra time.

Awesome experience!

We stayed at Kimbo Safari Camp just outside the Park itself. Accomodations were in tents (my wife would say we were "Glamping"). Food was excellent buffet style meals. Our guide were the best, Bya our guide was very knowledgable in both wildlife and plantlife. He was also very helpful in setting up photos, he knew his stuff!

The mountain makes this park!

It would be hard to have a more picturesque park, Mt Kilimanjaro truly rises like an Empress over Amboseli! The wildlife is good, but the lack of rhinos and the African wild dog make this park less than idea for a perfect safari destination. The villages are starting to crowd onto the edges of the park which makes the bush vibe really lacking. It still is totally a must visit African location, but I wouldn't recommend in June, where the park gets very dusty and the cloud cover hides that spectacular mountain!

Amboseli is a great place to watch elephants, zebra and deer. Not such a great place for birding and hardly any big cats. But it's still worth a visit if you want to see huge herds of elephants in the backdrop of the lovely Kilimanjaro.

Beautiful Kiliminjaro overlooking a small but wildlife-rich National Park teeming with beasts.

My road research proved correct as there is only one road from Nairobi to Amboseli and that is the C103 off the A109 Mombasa Road. It was a smooth tarmac road offering fantastic views of the South Rift Valley. Amboseli itself is a compact park - easy to navigate and drive around - and it was the first of Kenya's game parks to actually offer me an illustrated map, which was really useful.

Barely through the gate and you see wildebeest and ostrich...then giraffe, impala and then a herd of elephants. I had a pass for 48 hours and the first day I drove one loop around the park concentrating on the animals - as Mount Kilimanjaro was typically shrouded in cloud for the day. There is usually only an hour at dawn and an hour at dusk when the peak is visible. True enough, the following morning it was clear at 6am but clouded over shortly after. On my third day of the trip, things were delightfully different. The peak stayed could-free until 8:30am which allowed me to re-enter the park and take some coveted photographs of wildlife and mountain in harmony. This was definitely the highlight of the trip. Other Kenya parks are flat but Amboseli serves up Mount Kilimanjaro which actually ticks many travellers' life-ling ambitions - mine included.

The accommodation, AA Lodge, was perfect - self-contained chalet / bandas are very private and quiet. It didn't matter to me that I was outside of the Park as my resident Park fee was valid for 48 hrs. The pool was essential; it was so dry and hot that the dip in the water was a necessity. There were very few guests and the food was plain but the service was faultless. Such friendly staff.

My first glimpse of African wildlife, extraordinary wildlife and beautiful landscapes

Well, Amboseli was our first stop of our 13 day expedition in Kenya. Something that we read when planning our trip was that most people try to skip Amboseli and Aberdare and spend more time in Maasai Mara, but we decided not to and yes, we were rewarded. You don't get the same type of giraffes in Maasai to begin with, so you'd lose out on that.
Amboseli was simply great, really loved the landscapes which included Mt. Kilimanjaro. We were lucky enough to see herds of elephants, giraffes, zebras and a group of flamingos. The weather was chilly during the day and rather cold in the night (I'm from Sri Lanka and it gets pretty hot here, 34 degrees during the day). My highlight at Amboseli was when we tried taking photographs of the milky way over Mt. Kilimanjaro at about 1AM. It was freezing, but I managed to get a few shots of the night sky in all its glory. (must do, if you're a photographer). One of the travellers in our group (my mother) is a bird watcher and she spotted quite a few number of birds in Amboseli.

We stayed one night and that was at the Amboseli Sopa Lodge. The hotel was good and the food was excellent. A small note to travellers coming in from hot climate countries, you might want to wear winter clothes when you go to bed since it gets very cold during the night. Transportation and guides were brilliant, they were the same two guides we had for the whole stay in Kenya. We travelled about in two safari ready luxury coaches with plenty of space for the eleven us + baggage.

Remember - Do not skip Amboseli :)