Expert Reviews of Saiwa Swamp National Park (4 Reviews)

I have a real soft spot for the highlands of western Kenya. I love the greenery, the cool temperatures and the muddy little agricultural towns and villages where everyone seems to drink milky tea and wear welly boots. Kitale is one of my favourite such towns and Saiwa Swamp is one of the main reasons I’m so fond of Kitale (along with it being the very first town in East Africa, after Nairobi, that I ever visited). It’s a park I always try to slot into any travels around western Kenya. On the surface this might seem strange because this tiny park (at only 1 km sq it’s the smallest park in Kenya) doesn’t have any safari royalty mammals and there’s little in the way of a wilderness feel to the place (farmland comes right up to the fence that encircles the park). But what I like about Saiwa Swamp is simply that it is so different to Tsavo, the Mara and the others.

It’s a small patch of swamp with a thin border of jungly trees, and the only way to explore it is on foot

Read more

– a rare delight. The only large mammals you will see are sitatunga, a type of semi-aquatic antelope, and this is probably the best national park in all of East Africa in which to see them. There are also plenty of monkeys, with the flowing locks of the black-and-white colobus being the most memorable. With luck you might also catch a glimpse of Cape clawless or spotted-necked otter. But it’s birds where Saiwa really excels. More than 370 species have been seen in this tiny park including some that are more commonly associated with the jungles of the Congo or Uganda. I’m no expert birdwatcher but even I get excited about each flash of colour in the forest here, and to help the non-experts like me, highly knowledgeable ornithological guides are available at the park entrance. It pays to take one.

Saiwa Swamp National Park, located in western Kenya, is a hidden gem worth exploring when visiting this part of the country. Covering an area of only 3km², the park is primarily characterized by its lush swampy grasslands, fringed with vibrant reeds and dotted with papyrus. This unique habitat supports a rich variety of birds including specials such as the blue-headed coucal. Perhaps more significantly, it is one of the only accessible places to see the water-loving sitatunga antelope and the rare de Brazza’s monkey.

If you come here early in the morning or late afternoon sitatunga sightings are almost guaranteed. Several viewing decks are well positioned to give you a good vantage point over the marsh. On my last visit I spent the night on one of these platforms, which had been converted to a cabin. Staying overnight elevates the whole experience to a different level. After dark I listened to a chorus of frogs and the screeching of rock hyrax all around me. The

Read more

next morning, as I sipped my first cup of coffee, I watched several sitatunga antelopes gracefully navigating the reeds, shrouded in a blanket of mist. Later, I followed a trail around the marsh and was delighted to encounter a troop of de Brazza’s monkeys. The females were quite shy, quickly vanishing into the forest, but the much larger male, with his distinctive white beard, kept a close watch on me until I moved on.