Overview
Amboseli National Park is among the elite national parks in Kenya, eminent for being the best place in Africa to get close to free-roaming elephants. Amboseli is located in Loitoktok – Kajiado County, Southern Kenya, just northwest of Mount Kilimanjaro on the Kenya-Tanzania border. The park’s observation hill provides spectacular panoramas of the big peak and Amboseli’s swamps and plains.
‘Amboseli’ derives from a Maasai word meaning ‘salty dust’. The park is a perfect safari destination for nature lovers looking to explore habitats from open plains, wetlands with sulfur springs, rock-thorn bush, marshland, and acacia woodlands. You can also visit the park’s western region, which is dominated by the dried-up bed of the seasonal Lake Amboseli, which flocks with water birds during the rainy season. The park was declared a game reserve in 1948 but gazetted as a national park in 1974 to protect its unique ecosystem.
