Safari to Lake Naivasha

a timewarp of incomprehensible aristocratic mansions

Lake Naivasha is a major Rift Valley location in the Kenya Southwest region.

During the Colonial Era, this lake was used as the main airport for the country, an essential stop on the flying boat mail service which connected London with Cape Town.

It wasn’t long before aristocratic settlers were building fabulous mansions around the shoreline and the area became home to the infamous ‘Happy Valley Set’, renowned for a debauched lifestyle which was immortalised by Hollywood in the movie White Mischief.

These days Naivasha is a considerably less salubrious location, with the local village having grown into a sprawling town straddling what is now a major highway, whilst huge industrial flower farms and budget tourist lodges now dominate much of the shoreline.

Up to around 1995 Lake Naivasha was considered to be a near essential component of a trip around Kenya, but these days it most commonly tends to feature in low quality and budget safaris.

However if you are looking to do a relatively high-end trip, then there are still some interesting options in the Lake Naivasha area, with a handful of genuinely high class small lodges being clustered around the relatively unspoiled northwestern side of the main lake and around the shores of the Little Lake to the southwest.

These places are able to deliver a strong and varied range of activities and really provide a deep sense of this remarkable period of history.

We tend to most commonly include Lake Naivasha in trips for guests who specifically want to return here after many years away, although this does need to be done with great care in order to avoid disappointment.

Most visitors to this Lake Naivasha area tend to stay for 2 to 3 nights, usually in combination with popular Kenyan safari areas such as Maasai Mara, Meru, Samburu, as well as time down on the Kenya Coast.

Getting there

The infrequency with which higher quality trips include Lake Naivasha these days means that it is no longer included as a stop on the morning flight schedule between Nairobi and Maasai Mara.

There are options to charter on this route, which avoids driving out on the very busy and rather unpleasant main road.

On the way out, there is an afternoon flight service between Lake Naivasha and the Maasai Mara.

an area soiled by modern industrial agriculture