Reviews of Meru (From 9 Acclaimed Safari Experts)

Expert

Philip Briggs –

ZA

Visited: Multiple times

Philip is an acclaimed travel writer and author of many guidebooks, including the Bradt guides to Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa.

6 people found this review helpful.

The Phoenix Park

Overall rating

4/5

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Meru National Park was one of Kenya’s most popular Kenyan parks in the 1970s, when it was strongly associated with Joy and George Adamson of Born Free fame. It fell off the tourist map in the late 1980s, after being commandeered by commercial poachers. Fortunately, however, this underrated park has undergone a near-total recovery since I first visited it in the early 1990s, and game viewing and amenities have improved over every subsequent trip. Meru today supports large herds of elephant, buffalo and plains zebra, along with a good variety of antelope. The 83-sq-km drive-in rhino sanctuary close to the main gate is one of the best places in Kenya to see white rhinos (most commonly around Mururi Swamp in the early morning or late afternoon) and it is also home to a few elusive black rhino. Meru supports several northern species at the southern extent of their range e.g. reticulated giraffe, Beisa oryx, gerenuk, and a variety of birds, but it should be noted that these are generally more common and easily seen in Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves. Meru is not a great reserve for large carnivores: lions are quite common but leopard, cheetah and spotted hyena sightings are rather unusual. Above all, Meru NP is most memorable for its wilderness atmosphere, which is enhanced by the limited tourist traffic – you can still go entire game drives here without seeing another vehicle.

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Expert

Emma Gregg –

UK

Visited: December

Emma is an award-winning travel writer for Rough Guides, National Geographic Traveller, Travel Africa magazine and The Independent.

6 people found this review helpful.

Where Elsa the lion roamed free

Overall rating

4/5

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If you’re longing for a Kenyan park which the crowds have yet to find, Meru is well worth considering. You have to work a little harder to see the animals here than in, say, Amboseli or on the open plains of the Masai Mara, but the feeling of discovery more than compensates. I really enjoy its mixture of grassland, marshland and wooded landscapes – it feels more like a southern African than an East African park.

Several watercourses cross the park, ensuring a good supply of vegetation all year round – enough to support a good population of elephants, along with buffalo, giraffes and zebras. I’ve spent some highly enjoyable hours birdwatching in Meru, too.

6 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Expert

Stuart Butler –

UK

Visited: June

Stuart is a travel writer and author of numerous Lonely Planet guidebooks, including 'Kenya', 'Rwanda' and 'Tanzania'.

5 people found this review helpful.

Kenya's Forgotten Park

Overall rating

4/5

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At one time, way back in the 1970’s Meru was one of the most famous and popular parks in Kenya. But, throughout the ‘80’s though it gained a reputation for insecurity and poaching which culminated in the murder in 1989 of George Adamson (of Elsa the lion and Born Free fame). Security has since returned to the park and it’s today a perfectly safe place to visit, but for reasons that still remain something of a mystery to me Meru hasn’t really caught on again.

It’s certainly not because there’s no animals. The manager of one of the parks few lodges recalled to me how when he’d first arrived in Meru he was amazed by the variety of wildlife. It was true, he’d said, that animals aren’t too be found in the huge densities of the Mara where he’d previously been based, but in just his first couple of hours in Meru park he reckoned he’d seen more species than he would in a week or more in the Masai Mara.

For a visitor there’s plenty of plains game, beautiful giraffes, a fair few elephants and lions and leopards among many others. It’s also one of the best places to see rhinos. They live in a secured, fenced ‘park within a park’, built for their own protection and monitored at all times. But maybe more than the wildlife it’s the sense of peace which so captivates. On my last, three day, visit I didn’t see a single other safari jeep!

This is also a very beautiful park and one with a real wilderness feel. One of my abiding memories of Meru Park is of sitting atop one of the kopjes (granite outcrops) with rock hyraxes playing just beyond my reach, the sun setting and a herd of several hundred buffalo marching across the plain below me.

To summarise then, Meru is a park for people who want variety, a sense of wilderness and a total escape from other safari-goers.

5 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No

Expert

Mike Unwin –

UK

Visited: January

Mike is an award-winning wildlife writer, former editor of Travel Zambia magazine and author of the Bradt Guide to Southern African Wildlife.

4 people found this review helpful.

Meru National Park: ‘Born Free’ born again

Overall rating

4/5

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Meru National Park was the real-life setting for ‘Born Free’, the story of conservationists Joy and George Adamson and their hand-reared lioness Elsa. The site of the original Adamson camp still remains, and the upmarket Elsa’s Kopje lodge is today built upon Mughwango Hill where the couple used to take Elsa for walks. From the latter, the 360-degree panorama allows a spectacular overview of the rich mosaic of savanna, forest and swamp that makes this one of Kenya’s richest conservation areas, reputedly home to more mammal species than any other.

My three-day visit included good lion encounters – the population has been boosted by reintroductions – and evidence (tracks, kills and calls) of both leopard and cheetah. We also found several breeding herds of elephant, plus large buffalo herds and an impressive variety of antelope, including eland, oryx, Grant’s gazelle and the elusive lesser kudu. The park straddles a transition zone between the wildlife communities of northern and southern Kenya, and this is reflected in the fact that both zebra species – plains and Grevy’s – occur. There are also hippos and crocodiles in the Tana River and a special fenced protection zone that is home to both species of rhino. A wealth of birds includes such riverine specials as African finfoot and, during my visit, huge numbers of wintering Afro-palearctic migrants – from wheatears and bee-eaters to Montagu’s harriers quartering the marshes. Activities here include night drives and bush walks, and with visitor numbers low you will seldom meet another vehicle.

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Expert

Lizzie Williams –

ZA

Visited: Multiple times

Lizzie is a reputed guidebook writer and author of the Footprint guides to South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

4 people found this review helpful.

A beautiful off-the-beaten-track wildlife haven without the crowds

Overall rating

4/5

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Rampant poaching had just about decimated Meru when I first visited in the 1990s. But the Kenya Wildlife Service and other interested donors turned it around into a conservation success story thanks to a dedicated force of rangers and restocking of wildlife, and today it’s a Big Five park. The terrain is quite beautiful with khaki-coloured grasslands, acacia woodlands, sludgy marshes and riverine forest with doum and raffia palms. It receives very few visitors compared to the southern parks – on a self-drive visit, I didn’t see one other vehicle, so this unspoilt and pristine environment was simply enchanting. Its disadvantage however is that the game is definitely harder to spot – the lushness in the wet seasons mean that animals are often obscured, and the arid dry seasons forces them to disperse to out-of-reach regions even outside the park. Nonetheless, I’ve seen large herds of buffalo and elephant, both black and white rhino in the fenced off sanctuary, and at the Rojewero River viewpoint and boardwalk, half-submerged hippos and crocs, reticulated giraffes loping down to drink, and kingfishers, rollers, bee-eaters and weavers flitting about. Meru has little accommodation, but the Kenya Wildlife Service cottages and campsites are good, and the spectacular 5-star Elsa’s Kopje on Mughwango Hill is the best place I’ve stayed in this region of northeast Kenya.

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Expert

Brian Jackman –

UK

Visited: Multiple times

Brian is an award winning travel writer, author of safari books and regular contributor to magazines such as BBC Wildlife and Travel Africa.

3 people found this review helpful.

Home of Elsa the Born Free Lioness

Overall rating

4/5

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There’s a real away-from-it-all frontier feel about Meru that sums up the magic of northern Kenya. Overlooked by the blue Nyambeni Hills, its grassy glades and thorny seas of combretum thickets convey an overwhelming sense of wildness seldom encountered elsewhere. Swamps and rivers lined with doum palms provide year-round water for the game, and red granite kopjes loom out of the bush, including Mugwongo Hill, where George and Joy Adamson camped with Elsa, their famous Born Free lioness. Today Elsa’s descendants still roam the park, and the hill itself is now the site of Elsa’s Kopje, one of my favourite Kenyan lodges, from which you can set out in search of Meru’s Big Five as well as species seen only in the north: reticulated giraffe, beisa oryx and Grevy’s zebra. Birding is good, too, especially along the banks of the Tana and its tributary, the Rojoweru, which are home to giant kingfisher and African finfoot.

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Expert

Dale R Morris –

ZA

Visited: High season

Dale is a multi-award-winning writer and photographer with more than 500 published magazine articles featured in magazines such as National Geographic, BBC Wildlife, Travel Africa, and CNN Travel.

Iconic Africa With a Few Surprises

Overall rating

4/5

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My eyes started to wobble in their sockets as I tried for all my worth to capture a herd of Grevy’s zebras on my camera. Those closely spaced stripes really do confuse the senses, and I was able to appreciate how their ‘camouflage’ disorientates predators and tsetse flies alike.

There are other arid specialists to be found in the Meru National Park too. Take the gerenuk for instance; a weird-looking antelope that appears to have had its neck elongated on a rack, its head shrunk, and its ears stretched to an outlandish size.

You will see East African oryx with magnificent long horns, and you’ll also encounter reticulated giraffes with their pretty patterns and doleful eyes.

The usual suspects will be there in abundance too: large herds of buffalo. Lions, cheetahs, and leopards, as well as hippos, warthogs, elephants, and gazelles. You have a good chance of seeing them all, especially if you are doing a guided safari from one of the lodges in the park.

For me though, the real attraction of Meru is not just the varied and unusual species you’ll encounter, but also the fact that it isn’t as heavily visited by tourists as some of Kenya’s other famous parks (like the Mara, for example). You’ll rarely find yourself in traffic or fighting for space at a sighting.

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