7-Day Mt Kenya Hike & Samburu Safari – Summit Then Safari

Your adventure begins with an early morning departure from Nairobi, driving north through Thika, Karatina, and Nanyuki toward the northwest flank of Mount Kenya. The four-hour drive through coffee, tea, and macadamia growing country provides a fascinating journey through the central highlands before the distinctive silhouette of Kenya’s highest mountain appears above the clouds. You arrive at the Sirimon gate at 2650 metres elevation and meet your mountain guide and porter team for registration and a safety briefing. The afternoon acclimatisation walk through the lower forest zone introduces you to the mountain’s extraordinary biodiversity, with sunbirds feeding in the tree heather and sykes monkeys calling from the bamboo above the trail. You arrive at Judmaier Camp at 3300 metres for dinner and an early night in preparation for tomorrow’s main trekking day.

After a warming early breakfast at camp, you set out on the main Sirimon track through open moorland toward the Mackinders Valley and the dramatic Icy Mike campsite area below the mountain’s rocky core. Today covers approximately 12 kilometres with significant altitude gain, crossing moorland painted in the russet tones of red tufted heather and dotted with giant groundsel trees that seem to belong to a lost prehistoric landscape. Your guide points out buffalo tracks in the peaty soil, and the call of mountain chat accompanies you across the open ridgelines. As you gain altitude the vegetation thins and the bare volcanic rock of the main summits appears above you, with Lewis Glacier visible as a white ribbon between the towers of Batian and Nelion. You arrive at Shipton’s Camp at 4200 metres, the main acclimatisation camp, where dinner is served early and sleep comes despite the altitude and cold.

The 2am alarm is your call to the summit, and you layer up against the cold before setting out with headlamps into the starlit darkness. The three-hour pre-dawn ascent follows a clear but demanding path through volcanic scree and frozen rock toward the col below Point Lenana. Your guide sets a steady acclimatisation pace, pausing frequently to allow the group to catch breath in the thin air. As the eastern sky begins to lighten with the first blues and pinks of dawn, you make the final push to the rocky summit cairn at 4985 metres, arriving just as the sun crests the horizon and illuminates the glaciers of Batian and Nelion in brilliant gold. The view from Point Lenana on a clear morning extends to Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the Rift Valley, and the Laikipia plateau far below. After photographs and a moment of celebration, the descent begins on the Sirimon route back to the gate, where your safari vehicle awaits.

After a well-earned overnight rest in a Nanyuki guesthouse, you enjoy a leisurely breakfast before the four-hour drive east and north to Samburu National Reserve through the Laikipia plateau and Isiolo. The landscape transformation on this drive is one of Kenya’s most striking, as the fertile central highlands give way to the acacia-dotted semi-arid plains of the north, the red-ochre earth glowing against the thorny scrub and doum palm groves. You arrive at your riverside safari camp on the banks of the Ewaso Nyiro River in time for lunch, checking in and relaxing in the afternoon heat as elephants and buffalo visit the water’s edge just below the camp. Your guide provides a briefing on Samburu’s Special Five and the afternoon light makes an ideal introduction game drive along the river, locating the first of the reticulated giraffe and Grevy’s zebra that distinguish this extraordinary reserve.

A full Samburu morning game drive sets out before sunrise, the dry riverbed air sharp and cool as you navigate through the acacia woodland toward the Ewaso Nyiro. Enormous elephant families come to drink and bathe in the river’s shallows, and Nile crocodiles slip from their sandbank basking spots into the water below. Your guide tracks a Samburu lioness through the riverine scrub and locates the elusive Beisa oryx herd on the open volcanic plains east of the reserve. The gerenuk encounter of the morning is extraordinary: these long-necked, impossibly elegant antelope stand on their hind legs to browse acacias at two metres, their behaviour so specialised that they can live their entire lives without drinking water. The afternoon drive targets the Somali ostrich with their distinctive blue neck and leg colouring and surveys the northern sector’s rocky country where striped hyena and bat-eared fox are occasionally found.

A second full day in Samburu covers the reserve’s most remote and wildlife-rich sectors in morning and afternoon drives. The morning drive explores the area around the Samburu Buffalo Springs boundary where the vegetation changes and different species congregate around the natural springs that give the area its name. Wild dog, one of Africa’s most endangered predators, have been recorded in this area and your guide maintains contacts with the tracking team for any sighting opportunities. The leopard that has been monitored in the dense fig tree grove above the river is located resting in the canopy in the afternoon light, providing exceptional views of this secretive predator at close range. The evening brings a sundowner at the river’s edge as hippos resurface and the sky above the doum palms turns orange and purple in the Samburu dusk.

Your final Samburu morning begins with an early pre-dawn game drive as the reserve wakes in the first light, with the Special Five most active and concentrated before the heat builds. Your guide takes you to a favourite watering point where gerenuk, oryx, and Grevy’s zebra converge in the cool morning air and Verreaux’s eagle owl returns to its roost in the doum palms above the river. After an outstanding final drive and a hearty breakfast at camp, check out and begin the five-hour road journey back to Nairobi through the Isiolo and Nanyuki corridors, arriving in the capital by late afternoon with the extraordinary dual satisfaction of a Kenyan mountain summit and a northern wildlife haven experienced in a single unforgettable week.