5-Day Tsavo East West & Chyulu Hills Southern Kenya Safari

Depart Nairobi in the early morning for the four-hour drive southeast to Tsavo East National Park, entering through the Voi gate and into the park’s vast red-earthed plains. The landscape feels ancient and primordial as flat-topped acacias dot the horizon and the distant Yatta Plateau, the world’s longest lava flow, forms a dark escarpment across the northern skyline. Your safari guide drives you to your lodge for a welcome lunch before heading out on an afternoon game drive across the Aruba area, where the Aruba Dam reservoir attracts massive concentrations of wildlife during the dry season including hundreds of buffalo, zebra herds, and the park’s famous large-tusked bull elephants, their hides stained red by the distinctive iron-rich Tsavo soil.

Spend a full day exploring the best of Tsavo East on morning and afternoon game drives. At dawn, the park awakens as elephant families emerge from the bush to cross the Voi River, their calves stumbling through the shallows while crocodiles wait patiently downstream. Your guide navigates toward the Galana River, Tsavo East’s main waterway and the natural boundary separating the southern accessible zone from the northern wilderness. Hippo pods congregate in the deeper pools while crocodiles patrol the banks and Nile monitor lizards bask on the sandy shores. The afternoon drive takes you through open grassland where cheetah hunt impala in high-speed pursuits and oryx stand sentinel against the shimmering heat haze, while a possible sundowner on the Yatta Plateau offers panoramic views across the immense Tsavo plain.

After breakfast, you drive across the Tsavo ecosystem from east to west, crossing the Nairobi-Mombasa highway into Tsavo West National Park. The immediate change in landscape is dramatic as red plains give way to volcanic hills, acacia woodland, and rocky outcrops. Your first destination is the legendary Mzima Springs, where you descend into the underground viewing chamber to observe hippos and crocodiles from below the waterline in the eerily clear spring water. Continue through the Shetani lava fields, where the black solidified lava creates a surreal moonscape, before arriving at your lodge near the foot of the Chyulu Hills for lunch and an afternoon game drive through the volcanic terrain.

Rise early for the crown jewel of this 5-day safari as you enter the Chyulu Hills National Park, a pristine and rarely visited wilderness of young volcanic peaks, ancient cloud forest, and sweeping highland views. Your morning walk through the Chyulu forest with a local guide reveals wild orchids, giant ferns, colobus monkeys in the canopy, and the rich volcanic soil from which the underground springs that become Mzima originate. The afternoon returns you to Tsavo West for a game drive targeting the Ngulia Rhino Sanctuary and the open grass plains where lions rest beneath spreading fig trees and the distant silhouette of Kilimanjaro frames the southern horizon on clear days.

Enjoy a final early morning game drive through Tsavo West as the park awakens around you, with elephants heading to morning water sources and birds singing across the volcanic landscape. After a hearty breakfast at the lodge, check out and begin the drive back to Nairobi along the scenic Nairobi-Mombasa highway, passing through the dramatic Athi-Kapiti Plains and arriving in Nairobi by mid-afternoon, enriched by five days of extraordinary southern Kenya wilderness.