Experience the best of Amboseli National Park

Amboseli National Park lies in southern Kenya on the Tanzanian border, on a flat dry plain with Mount Kilimanjaro rising just across it. The mountain's snow cap is often visible at dawn or dusk when the clouds lift. The park is known for its elephant herds, which gather at swamps fed by meltwater filtering underground from the mountain's slopes.

Beyond the swamps lies a dry lake bed of pale dust that shimmers with mirages, and Observation Hill gives a view over the plain. Lions, cheetahs, hyenas, buffalo, giraffes, zebras and wildebeest also live here, and more than four hundred bird species have been recorded, including pelicans, crowned cranes and kingfishers. Maasai herders live on the land around the park, in villages of low houses, with their cattle.

Maasai cooking is based on milk and meat, and in the nearby towns nyama choma, grilled meat, is eaten with ugali, a stiff maize porridge. The long dry seasons, from June to October and January to February, give the clearest views of the mountain, while the rains turn the plain green.