2-day safari in Amboseli National Park, Kenya

Published: November 2, 2023

Kenya is famous for national parks full of wildlife, perfect for both short and long safari trips. After first visiting Nairobi National Park, we chose Amboseli National Park as our next safari destination. Amboseli, located right next to the border with Tanzania is famous for elephants and beautiful views to Kilimajaro mountain. We took a two-day package tour to the park from Nairobi, and the experience was great! In this post we shortly introduce Amboseli National Park and open up the content and price of our 2-day tour.

Amboseli National Park in a nutshell

Amboseli National Park is one of Kenya’s most popular safari destinations and often referred to as the home of Africa’s elephants. The park is even considered the best place in the world to observe elephants up close. The most famous resident of Amboseli is probably Echo, a huge male elephant that passed away in 2009. He lived to be 60 years old, and his life was followed, studied and documented for decades. Another icon of Amboseli was Tim, also a large male elephant, who died in 2020 at the age of 50. Amboseli is still home to several large male elephants that spend a lot of time separated from the herds of females, young males and baby elephants. Other fauna in Amboseli includes for example herds of Kaffir buffalo, lions, cheetahs, wildebeests, impalas, hyenas, Masai giraffes and Grant’s zebras. There are hundreds of bird species in the park, and the salt lakes of the area are home to large flocks of flamingos.

Amboseli National Park was established in 1974 and is approximately 390 square kilometers in size. The name Amboseli comes from the Maasai word empusel, which means a salty, dusty place, and refers to the partially dried up salt lakes. The park is part of a wider ecosystem that stretches across the border between Kenya and Tanzania. Africa’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro, is on the Tanzanian side, but practically right next to Amboseli National Park. On clear days, the snow-capped Kilimanjaro can be seen in the park, and makes a great backdrop for wildlife photography. Kilimanjaro is quite often covered in clouds though, and for that reason you should go to Amboseli either in the evening before sunset or early in the morning, when there often are less clouds.

Our two-day safari tour in Amboseli National Park

Even if we usually are very independent travelers, this time we chose an organized tour. The main reason for this was to save time, because we wanted to do the trip in an easy and quick way from Nairobi. To search suitable tour packages, we used Viator, through which we booked a two-day all-inclusive safari trip with transportation, accommodation and meals, organized by a tour operator called Nairobi and Beyond Safaris.

Originally, our trip to Amboseli was supposed to be a group safari, but the night before the trip, the guy from the safari company called to ask if it would be okay to change to a private tour, apparently because the rest of the group wanted some special program and the accommodation was different from ours too. They asked for a $50 additional payment for this (for car entrances to the national park), and it definitely was worth it. Group tours are usually way cheaper than private tours, but come with the risk that your fellow travelers can be annoying, and you can’t much influence the program of the tour. In addition, if the group tour is full, it will be more cramped in the car. The seats in the safari cars are actually quite spacious, but when seven people stand up to take photos of the animals at the same time, it can easily become too crowded, and it’s also more difficult to get good angles for your photos.

Drive from Nairobi to Amboseli

Our trip started from Nairobi at eight o’clock in the morning, when our driver and guide Steve came to pick us up from our apartment. The four-hour trip to Amboseli went very smoothly, with one coffee break at a large cafe / restaurant / souvenir shop complex. There were really nice handicrafts for sale, but as in these stores in general, there are no prices on display at all, and when you ask, everything is very expensive. By negotiating, you can get more reasonable prices, but we find the game somehow exhausting.

Accommodation in AA Lodge Amboseli

Our accommodation, AA Lodge Amboseli, located right near the park’s gates (Kimana Gate), was nicer than we actually expected. The service, starting with the serving of mango juice upon arrival, was very friendly, the setting of the place is quite nice, and our own “tent” was a large canvas-walled cabin with its own bathroom. The lodge has a swimming pool, a bar and a bonfire area, and of course a large restaurant, where we headed for a buffet lunch right after check-in.

Sunset game drive in Amboseli

We left for the first game drive at half past four, and reached the gate of Amboseli after only about 10 minutes of driving, most of which was spent on the rather miserable little road leading to the Lodge. We saw the first giraffes and ostriches already before reaching the park gate. Steve took care of the entrance formalities (on this tour the park fees were included in the price, so the safari company took care of registering us and paying the fees at the gate). There were quite a lot of cars at the gates in the same time, but as the park is large, we didn’t really tail other safari cars. The guides communicated with each other of course, and several cars gathered to the “best spots”.

Amboseli’s biggest attraction is the possibility to see a lot of elephants from a close range, and we do agree that it was the best part of the game drive. We saw several older, huge males roaming around alone, and several herds of females, young males and baby elephants. It was wonderful just to stop watching the elephants eating and walking, I could have done that for hours!

The evening game drive lasted about three and a half hours, and it was enough time to make a rather big loop in the park. In addition to elephants, giraffes, zebras and antelopes we saw for example a lot of hyenas. Actually with hyenas we have now “completed” seeing the “ugly five”, meaning hyenas, warthogs, marabou storks, vultures and blue wildebeest. From the famous big five, we are still missing leopards.

As the light of the sunset painted the park in soft colors, it was time to drive back to the accommodation, still spotting more elephants on the way. Back in the lodge we took a shower and headed to the restaurant for a very good buffet dinner. After dinner it was time for a couple of drinks at the bar, and we also followed a Maasai dance show by bonfire for a while. As we were on a private tour, we could decide the schedule for the next day, and ended up choosing an early morning sunrise game drive before breakfast, although many people do it the other way around.

Early morning game drive in Amboseli

Waking up before 6:30 in the morning was a bit painful experience, but it was worth it. Only one other car left for an early morning game drive from the lodge, and there was no traffic at the gate at all. Unfortunately Kilimanjaro was covered in clouds, but the drive was great anyway. Again we got to admire herds of elephants, zebras and antelopes. We also saw more giraffes, baboons with babies, crocodiles, flamingos and a lot of smaller birds. We returned back to the lodge before nine, and headed straight to have some breakfast before the buffet was closed. We met Steve again at ten, and drove practically straight back to Nairobi. We could have included a visit to a Maasai village in the trip, but we skipped it, because organized village visits like this usually don’t feel genuine. We were back home around two in the afternoon.

Costs of the 2-day safari tour

The total cost of this two-day trip was 326 euros per person, of which the entrance fees to the national park were roughly 112 euros. That means that accommodation, meals and (non-alcoholic) drinks, transport, guidance and the safari company’s share were in total around 214 euros per person. Does it sound expensive or affordable? It’s quite a lot of money for sure, but as an all-inclusive private tour, it can’t be considered expensive. For sure the experience was worth the money. For additional price, it would have been possible to customize the tour, for example by adding a hot air balloon flight in the park.