I stand on Kenyan soil, the highest point in the African continent towering before my eyes. It is in another country, but I see it clear as day: so close is Kenya’s Amboseli National Park to the Tanzania border.
The flat summit of Mount Kilimanjaro dominates the skyline here, and it has become synonymous with the national park. No matter where you travel to across Amboseli’s 392-square-kilometre expanse — its freshwater lakes, its swampy ditches that are home to pelicans and flamingos, or its dusty desert shrub areas inhabited by wildebeest, zebras and impalas — the mountain will remain visible from the corner of your eye. But Mount Kilimanjaro is more than just a permanent fixture on the horizon: for this diverse national park, it is almost a lifeline. Amboseli lake, the largest in the park and also its namesake, is fed by the mountain. Or so the locals believe. The snow that caps the flat-topped mountain trickles its way underground, quietly crosses the border and travels all the way to the Amboseli like a subaltern tendril, they say, surfacing in the midst of the park, far away from its source.
A young elephant plays in a swamp at Kenya's Amboseli National Park
The lake itself shows no sign of being connected to the mountain. It just lies there, stretching over a distance of 20 kilometres, dependent just as much on the rains: in fact, it was only a few years ago that it was rain-fed enough to grow into the hub for hippopotamuses and flamingos that it is today.
- Masai Mara national reserve is an iconic destination, not only for interactions with the tourism-savvy Masai tribe, but also for the annual wildebeest migration across Mara river
- Nakuru Lake is one of the more popular saline or ‘soda’ lakes in the Rift Valley. Once a hotbed for flamingos, the lake is still a birder’s destination, as well as a sanctuary for the rhinoceros and the Rothschild’s giraffe
- Naivasha Lake is a freshwater lake just off Naivasha town, near Nairobi. The nearly 100-feet-deep lake is famous as a haunt for the hippopotamus and fish eagles
Amboseli has not always been this diverse. Middle-aged inhabitants — from forest and tourism officials to villagers living around the park — remember a time when it was nearly dry, and speak of certain stretches (in certain rain-heavy years) that are so deep that even elephants struggle to swim across. And then there was that one year: the year when it rained almost incessantly, wreaking havoc upon the entire national park. Even today, tourists can drive past the ruins of hotels and guest houses that used to be bustling with activity in the early 1990s. Those buildings, now eerie and abandoned, face a portion of the lake that is bordered by trees long dead — trees that have stood tall, white and bare for years under the harsh Kenyan sun even as the fauna around them continues to flourish. Those buildings flank a swamp — one of the many that dot the national park — that is a favourite haunt of elephants. If you are lucky, you will see not only a herd of the giants when you cross, but also a couple of little ones splashing about in the weedy waters, submerged neck-deep and toying at the floating greens with their trunks.
It is no wonder that the elephants enjoy splashing in the water: more often than not, they arrive in these spots covered in dust, pounding up a haze of even more dust as they travel through the dry, shrub-riddled stretches to get there. The same holds for the lions, hyena, wildebeest, giraffe, zebra, impala and ostrich that inhabit these plains.
Each of these species roam Amboseli in scores — some even in hundreds — without getting in each other’s way. That is how vast the national park is. The sheer scale of it can be gleaned, in part, from atop its viewing hill, which offers a view of the national park on all sides. It stretches out far enough to match the sky in its vastness. Large enough to make full-grown African elephants look like little moving dots, dwarfed by the size of the lake they approach. The sheer distance addles the mind, with flat-topped acacia trees reduced to the size of streaks, and swamps reduced to splotches on an earth-and-grass coloured canvas. Only three things have the capacity to hold their own, to provide some sense of scale amid the distance: Amboseli lake, Mount Kilimanjaro, and the giraffes.
Giraffes in Kenya's Amboseli National Park
Gangly, towering and gently dignified, the giraffes match height with trees, no matter where they are. Their curious shapes form perfect silhouettes against the sun, even from afar. In the wide expanse of Amboseli, they bring some much-needed perspective, munching leaves off the treetops without even bothering to crane their necks. Not that they care about how we see them: any human that passes them is of trifling interest. At most, they will set an idly curious eye on you for a minute, before ambling away dismissively.
