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Expert Reviews of Tsavo West National Park (7 Reviews)

Tsavo West Safaris Tsavo West National Park
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3.8571 / 5 3.9 /5
3.8571 / 5 4.0000 / 5 3.7143 / 5 3.8571 / 5

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4 star 4 / 7 4
3 star 2 / 7 2
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Gigantic Park on the Mombasa Highway

4 / 5 4 /5
4 / 5 3 / 5 4 / 5 4 / 5

Tsavo West – the part of Tsavo that lies between the Mombasa Road and the Tanzanian border – contains one of the most accessible swathes of safari country in East Africa.

The main target, known as the developed area, is a hilly pocket of land in the northern section of the park, dotted with campsites and lodges with good facilities and none of the closed-door stuffiness that can afflict some of the more exclusive places on the safari circuit. The undulating terrain offers some fantastic views and there’s enough vegetation to support huge herds of buffalo, zebras and antelopes; there’s also a reasonably healthy population of lions, known for their unusually short manes (some males have no mane at all). My favourite spot is Mzima Springs, where you can explore the banks of two large pools on foot, watching birds, hippos and crocodiles. It’s popular, so if you’re travelling independently it’s best to get here early, when things are still quiet.

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Kenya’s Best-Known Wilderness Park

3 / 5 3 /5
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Situated immediately southwest of the Nairobi–Mombasa Highway, Tsavo West is a smaller national park than its eastern namesake, but slightly better for general game viewing. Most people end up in the so-called ‘developed area’ close to Mtito Andei Gate, and this probably hosts the densest wildlife populations, including elephant, giraffe, lion, spotted hyena and the lovely but very skittish lesser kudu. This area also offers access to the 95 sq km Ngulia Rhino Sanctuary, which was created in 1986 to protect the few black rhinos that survived the intensive poaching of the 1970s and now supports around 150 individuals. The sanctuary only opens to day visitors from 4pm to 6pm, when you stand a very good chance of seeing rhino come to drink at a pair of waterholes overlooked by a viewing platform that can also be booked on an overnight basis. Another favourite spot in Tsavo West is Mzima Springs, where fish and sometimes hippo can be seen from an underwater viewing tank. The developed
Read more area also hosts several impressive landmarks of recent volcanic origin, notably the Shetani Lava Flow, an area of bare black boulders whose Swahili name means ‘devil’. On a clear day, the views of Kilimanjaro are stunning. A lesser known part of Tsavo West that I have always enjoyed is Lake Jipe, which lies on the border with Tanzania and hosts plenty of hippo, elephant and waterbirds.
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Action at the Water’s Edge

3 / 5 3 /5
3 / 5 3 / 5 3 / 5 4 / 5

Unexpectedly, Tsavo West National Park ended up being one of the highlights of our most recent Kenya trip. Animals tend to be a bit skittish and the thick, straggly bush isn’t the easiest for game viewing but the water hole outside our guesthouse attracted a constant stream of animals. We enjoyed seeing the same group of elephant bulls coming and going over two days as well as eland, giraffes, warthogs, yellow baboons, big herds of buffalo, waterbuck and impalas. You must know that Tsavo West is a very seasonal park and the action at the water holes only really picks up from mid-July. As the caretaker of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) guesthouse said, the visitors who were there a week before us didn’t see a thing. We were lucky! Oh, and I did get a pic of a fringe-eared oryx running across the road (only the second time I managed to get a shot of this rare dry-country antelope). So, double lucky!

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Perhaps Kenya’s Greatest Unexplored Wilderness

5 / 5 5 /5
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To the southwest of Tsavo East, and on the opposite side of the Nairobi–Mombasa Highway, you find Tsavo West National Park. This park is one of the greatest wildlife spectacles that this remarkable country has to offer. Even compared with the spectacular Masai Mara, the wildlife density at Lake Jipe (far to the south on the Tanzania border) is astounding. There are great herds of plains game here, immense flocks of waterfowl, massive pods of hippos and vast herds of elephants that can often be seen swimming between the reed islands that lie just offshore from the Kenyan shore. Chyulu Gate campsite in the north of the park makes an ideal first stop and from there a single day’s driving will take you to the Kenya Wildlife Service campsite on Lake Jipe. There are no lodges or hotels in this area, though, since it is just too remote and there are no convenient airstrips. For the time being, one of Kenya’s most beautiful wildlife areas can only be accessed with a sturdy 4WD, several extra
Read more jerry cans of fuel and a fair amount of dedication. Make the sacrifice though and you’ll never regret it.
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Animal-Rich Grasslands Sheltered by Volcanic Hills

4 / 5 4 /5
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Thanks to its volcanic character, Tsavo West is hillier than Tsavo East. It is divided into two parts by the A23 road between Voi and Taveta. To the north of this road, and also bounded on the east by the Mombasa–Nairobi Highway (A109), is the ‘Developed Area’ where most of the lodges and game-driving tracks are. Here I would highly recommend stopping for a drink, lunch, or stay at Kilaguni Serena Safari Lodge and/or Severin Safari Camp to watch the action at the always busy waterholes: elephant, giraffe, antelope and warthog are permanent residents, and lion are regularly seen. A highlight of my safari was the beautiful Mzima Springs, a sparkling oasis of crystal-clear pools surrounded by date and raffia palms, giant figs and waterberry trees. The water is filtered to aquarium-transparency by porous volcanic ash, and in the submerged observation chamber I watched the blue swirl of large fish – lucky visitors may also see a crocodile swimming by. On my self-drive safari, I also
Read more enjoyed the part of Tsavo West south of the A23, especially Lake Jipe, which straddles the Tanzania border. It was a wonderfully peaceful area for a bit of hippo- and bird-spotting, and there were plenty of elephants around and marvellous views north to Kilimanjaro in the early evening when the cloud lifted from the summit.
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Crystal Waters in a Thirsty Land

4 / 5 4 /5
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From the foot of the Chyulu Hills all the way down to the Tanzanian border, Tsavo West is a wild and broken land of volcanic hills, black lava flows and dense acacia woodland that makes game viewing harder than on the open plains of the Masai Mara. Nevertheless, all the Big Five can be seen – if you include the black rhinos in their heavily protected sanctuary at Ngulia. Also well worth a visit are the world-famous pools of Mzima Springs. There’s a submerged hide where you can watch fish swim past through plate-glass windows; if you are very lucky, you might even see hippos underwater. The birding is great, too. More than 400 species are present in Tsavo West, including must-see specials such as golden pipit and vulturine guineafowl. Kilaguni and Ngulia – two of Kenya’s oldest-established lodges – are situated in the park. Both overlook waterholes where elephant and sometimes leopard come to drink. But for a truly luxurious Out-of-Africa experience you must stay at Finch Hatton’s
Read more – a paradise of fever trees and crystal pools alive with hippos, crocodiles and kingfishers.
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Tsavo West – Kenya’s Southern Wilderness

4 / 5 4 /5
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The vast and uninhabited plains of Tsavo West are high on my list of favorite Kenyan safari destinations. Wildlife densities are much lower here than the Masai Mara or even Tsavo’s other half away to the east. But the shaggy maned lions of Tsavo – descendants of the legendary man-eaters of Tsavo – are one of East Africa’s more memorable sights and often seen, while some of my best-ever leopard sightings were in Tsavo West’s Rhino Valley, in the shadow of the dramatic Ngulia Hills. Buffalo and red-hued elephants are also common, while the 90-sq-km Ngulia Rhino Sanctuary, complete with armed guards, has been a huge success in bringing the black rhino back from the brink of extinction – there are around 50 black rhinos in the sanctuary, with another 15 or so having been released into the wider park. I’ve always found that the rhinos are easier to see at night around the waterhole at Ngulia Safari Lodge than in the sanctuary, where the dense vegetation can make sightings difficult.
Read more Tsavo West has a lonely, lost-in-Africa feel to it, a feeling you won’t find anywhere else in Kenya’s major parks.
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