Tsavo National Park is in the south east of Kenya and are accessible from Mombasa. Safari can be combined with a beach and diving trip to Diani or Watamu.
The park is the largest in Kenya at 22,000 sq.km. It is divided in two – East and West – by the old and now also new railways. We travelled to Tsavo East and West on a 4 day 3 night trip in early March of 2020, just days before the borders closed and travel shut down due to COVID pandemic. We arranged our trip through one of many travel agencies in Mombasa who took us around in a pop up roof van and arranged all the lodges along the way. We had an excellent safari and saw many animals and birds and admired beautiful landscapes of Tsavo.
We flew into Mombasa in the morning and headed over to Tsavo. The drive from Mombasa airport to the boundary of the park where we started a game drive took about 2 hours. The rest of the day we spent game driving to the first lodge. We saw plenty of wild life including many red elephants of Tsavo, on the account of red dirt that they splash on themselves.
Tsavo park is crossed by the old (and new) railway from Mombasa to Uganda. The old railway was built by the British in 1896-1901. The road got a name of Lunatic Express because of complications with its construction. Here is a good book to read on the story of the railway and East Africa of the period. One famous story related to this is the case of man eating lions that developed a taste for humans and terrorized imported Indian workforce. The lions one sees in Tsavo now are presumably descendants of those man eaters. We were told they have not been known to eat humans lately.
Tsavo park also has a very reach and diverse bird life. We are not exactly birders but big and colorful birds are fun to try to take a picture of.
Kori bustard is the heaviest flying bird reaching 19kg. We watched one male performing its elaborate mating display.
When male decides to attract a female, they puff up their neck, turn up their tail and make them look big.
And since they are a big bird to start with, when puffed up they are comparable to an impala in size!
Landscape is beautiful with hills in the distance, rivers crossing the valleys, lava flows, striking rock formations and waterfalls. Tsavo East is flatter and drier while Tsavo West has more mountains and is wetter and greener.
Mudanda rock forms a natural dam and offers great views of the park and animals coming for a drink. Reportedly the rock was used by the people to dry their meat on it back in the day.
After another full day iin Tsavo East on the third day we headed over to Tsavo West across the road.
Tsavo West includes a fenced off area of a rhino sanctuary. We did not see rhinos but saw all sorts of wild life in Tsawo West, including many giraffes
All in all we had an excellent safari even though rain season started to come in. Definitely worse a visit and a nice combo with diving in either Diani or Watamu.