Tsavo National Park Kenya is the largest game park in Kenya covering an area of over 22,000 square kilometers. This park is not only large in Kenya but ranks among the top 5 largest parks in East Africa, top 10 largest parks in Africa and top 20 largest parks in the whole world wide. The park is found in the Kenyan Coast Province about 5-to-7-hour drive from the country’s capital Nairobi. This park is so big its divided into two parts for easy management and touring of the park. The divisions are Tsavo East and Tsavo West. These two divisions are differentiated by the river that runs through the park. The river is river Tsavo from which the park gets its name.
Tsavo national park, is not only a big park in size, its also home to numerous animals over 200 mammal species including the big five – lion, leopard, elephant, rhinos, elephants. Over 600 bird species and a number of other creatures that make their home in this park.
Being big is one thing and having the largest mammal is another but when that large mammal also has a unique color, its makes everything so surreal. Tsavo is home to the rare red elephants that get their color from the park’s red soil. The park’s soil is red because it has a very high iron oxide levels found in the sparse vegetation in the park.
There’s a popular myth about tsavo national park, the man-eater myth. Well to the locals it may not be a myth really but a reflection of what happened in the past. In the times when the Kenya Uganda railway was being built it is said or believed that there was man-eating lions from the Tsavo park that were eating the workers that were handling the construction. Despite all that the railway line was successfully completed and it currently runs through the park as one of the unique attractions in the park.
Other things that make the park unique is its landscape, which was formed by volcanic activity over 100 years back. The landscape has rocky tops and lava flow shaped places making is extremely picturesque on the eye.
When it comes to the park weather or climate, its between arid and semi-arid, getting all the four seasons of the east African weather but receives its most rain in the long rainy season. You can expect the park temperatures to go as high 35 degrees Celsius in the dry season and as low as 18 degrees Celsius in the rainy season.
Like any other safari destination, the dry season is the best time to visit this park. As stated above the park has the east African weather and get two dry seasons. The short one in Jan to march and the long one in June to September.
Exciting activities you can do in this park include but are not limited to game drives, bird watching, hiking, nature walks and many others. It’s a big park so these activities will take more than a day hence the famous saying, when you visit Tsavo you double the time.
Because of its size and the quality and quantity of wildlife this park has, most people that visit this park are wildlife scientists or students studying wildlife and nature. This park is well situated for that. In fact, most of the savannah wildlife studies are done in this park. But do not fret, even regular tourists visit this park and have the usually safari activities. Most popular of them are the night game drives and the ostriches viewing.
