Travel blog: the opening of a corridor in Kenya

24-08-2025 - After a good night's sleep, off to Nanyuki

After a good night's sleep, despite the lions roaring, we woke up feeling refreshed this morning. We stayed at a beautiful campsite, which we hadn't seen anything of last night because it was dark. Klaas-Jan encountered a green monkey while freshening up in the morning. Then, in the beautiful vegetation surrounding the campsite, we saw many weavers busily weaving nests for their females. Let's hope the ladies like them, otherwise they'll just throw the nests back on the ground and the males will have to start all over again.

After a delicious breakfast with organic eggs and delicious Kenyan coffee, we were picked up to continue our journey to Nanyuki. It's incredible what you encounter along the way! Mopeds with a whole load of furniture on the back, a pickup truck with a cow in the back, lots of people on their way to church because it's Sunday. Everywhere you look, there are stalls selling local agricultural products such as pineapples, mangoes, avocados, cane sugar and coffee, which Klaas Jan has already stocked up on to take home.

After more than 200 km, which took us over 4 hours, we arrived in Nanyuki and it started raining spontaneously. According to our driver, these were blessings from above. That bodes well for our trip! However, when we wanted to transfer the camera images to the PC, everything seemed to have disappeared completely. After a brief period of panic and calling a helpline in the Netherlands, we were finally able to start dinner with relief and then go to bed nice and early.

August 25, 2025 - On the road with Benjamin from Save The Elephants

Today was finally the day we were going to meet Benjamin from the Save The Elephant. It was a warm reunion. We got in the car and set off for Oldonyiro. As we left the busy town of Nanyuki, it was clear that we were entering completely different territory. According to Benjamin, we were now driving into the ‘real’ Kenya. After a while, the asphalt ended and we were driving on red sandy roads with the usual potholes and bumps. It was quite a feat to stay seated in the car. Pretty soon we encountered giraffes, Grévy's zebras, and eland antelopes. To recover from this impressive ride, we took a break on top of a rock. Amidst beautiful bird sounds, we also heard the “go-away bird.” This bird owes its name to the sound it makes. Obedient as we are, we continued on our way. Along the way, we saw small, charming villages and a Samburu warrior whom we were even allowed to photograph. It is striking that many people here wear traditional clothing, which is very colorful with many beautiful bead necklaces. All Samburu men also carry a stick. This is part of their culture and serves as a means of defense. It is also clear that there is little to no tourism here and that we are a sight to see because of our skin color.

Around noon, we arrived in Oldonyiro, where we made a brief stop at Benjamin's house. It was nice to meet his family, and his little son was very happy with the souvenir we had brought from Beekse Bergen. After this quick visit, it was time for lunch. It took some getting used to what we were served, but our politeness did not fail us.

August 26, 2025 - The human-animal conflict

OK, we've ended up somewhere: the best hotel in Oldonyiro. A bed with a mosquito net, a desk to work at, a toilet, and a shower. Unfortunately, there's no water coming out of the shower, and the toilet doesn't flush unless you pour a bucket of water down it yourself. In the morning, they bring us a bucket of hot water to wash ourselves. Oh yes... the E-sim we bought has no reception, and we only have electricity for a few hours. But... you won't hear us complaining. Everything we experience makes it all so incredibly worthwhile. The days are full of surprises.

Benjamin picked us up early this morning and brought a surprise with him: his sister and some other family members. It's nice to get to know more and more people. Yesterday, many pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and today a number of important ones followed. We went to another part of the corridor to learn more about the erosion channels. At its narrowest point, the corridor is only 100 meters wide, and then you have to imagine families of 100 elephants walking through it. This elephant trail was very visible to us because there was elephant dung every 15 meters. But even there, erosion threatens to make the corridor impassable during the next heavy rainstorm. Fortunately, a solution has already been devised in the form of a sand dam, which will hopefully ensure that the gullies fill up again with newly washed-up sand. This dam is also part of the money donated by Beekse Bergen and Stichting Wildlife. Only when you are there can you really see how important our donation has been in securing this corridor.

During our walk along the channels and through the dry riverbed, we came across a girl fetching water for her family. She does this in the same way as elephants, by digging a hole and allowing the groundwater to slowly flow into it. Little by little, she scoops it out of the hole and pours it into a 20-liter barrel. Barrel on her back... and tomorrow again. How luxurious our lives are in the Netherlands, and how irrelevant our entire shower experience in our hotel has become.

The rest of the day was dominated by the conflict between the population and the elephants. We visited 15-year-old Sarouli in hospital. He lives with his family and goats in a boma (a fenced-off area with a small house in the middle) just outside the corridor. Two weeks ago, he was attacked by an elephant while herding his goats in the corridor. He was very “lucky” and only broke his thigh. He was well cared for by the community and taken to hospital by helicopter at the expense of Save The Elephants. This accident is a clear sign that there are still conflicts between elephants and the local population.

What do you know... we also went to visit Julius. Julius lives in a beautiful house with a huge garden of which he is very proud. Elephants have visited his garden several times, despite the fact that it is fenced in. But it is precisely this fence that makes his garden super green and therefore an ideal restaurant for elephants. As a temporary solution, he had devised a fence made of rattling plastic bottles. But of course, elephants are smart enough to stop being afraid of plastic bottles after a while, so Julius will have to come up with a new strategy to keep himself and his family safe.

Another part of the conflict was a shared waterhole for humans and animals. During the day, goats, cows, dogs, schoolchildren and anyone else who is thirsty drink from this pool of brown water. But at night, it is the elephants that come here to quench their thirst, and in a few cases, which is when it becomes dangerous, during the day at the same time as the humans. But the biggest problem here is again the narrow section at this point. Because so many elephants come here so often, almost all the acacia trees have disappeared, rendering the soil infertile. There is so much going on around elephants and the local population that it is impossible to comprehend or describe in a few blogs. In any case, we are very impressed by it.

At the end of the day, Benjamin and John took us to a beautiful spot by a river to watch the sun go down while enjoying a drink. Unfortunately for the baboons, we were sitting exactly where they wanted to sleep, so they went to bed a little later. What a surprise when we suddenly saw three elephants and four giraffes walking in the distance! On the way back, we saw Grévy's zebras and vultures. Once back in Oldonyiro, a delicious meal of rice, spinach and chicken (bones) awaited us. On to tomorrow!

August 27, 2025—a celebration to remember

Today is the big day: we are going to unveil the corridor marker! It promises to be quite an event. Colleagues of Benjamin from Save the Elephants and two Mamma Tembos (which means mother of the elephants) made a special four-hour trip to Oldonyiro yesterday to celebrate this joyful moment. Yvonne immediately felt a connection with the Mamma Tembos, as Dirk Lips often refers to her as the mother of the elephants. Before we went to this festive moment, we first drove to the corridor and the Mamma Tembos gave us a clear explanation of what their work consists of. Every day, they use an app on their phones to monitor which animals are passing through the corridor, check the freshness of the elephants' dung, and register herders with their livestock and other human activities in the corridor. Everything is recorded with the date, name, and correct GPS coordinates. They are also the point of contact for the herders around the corridor. It helps, of course, that the Mamma Tembos are chosen by the community. As a result, they are highly respected. During the conversation, it became clear that this profession is not entirely without risk.

After the interesting explanation by the Mamma Tembos, we went to the place where we would open the corridor by symbolically unveiling one of the 20 markers... What we experienced then cannot really be summarized in a blog like this. It was a memory for life. All the people who live close to the corridor (+/- 70) were invited to this event: village elders, women, and children. There were also some leaders from the region and a few other important people whose roles we don't know exactly.

29-08-2025 – The road to samburu

After the impressive evening yesterday, one we will never forget, a new day began today. We said goodbye to our now familiar little village of Oldonyiro and to our hotel staff (one person ;). When we asked for the bill, we were astonished at the amount. One night’s stay cost the same as a single drink on a terrace in the Netherlands. And here, you even received a bucket of hot water and a clean towel every morning. After breakfast, the five of us left for Samburu. The trip was about 130 km and took us around 4.5 hours. By now, we are used to the bumps and potholes. Along the way, we saw various bomas and, of course, many herders guiding their goats to their destination. Some were very young herders—we estimated from as young as four years old. Unfortunately, we did not encounter much wildlife on the way, apart from Klaas being the only one to spot an elephant. Very special, because even on the return trip no one else saw it. The only animals we did see were dik-diks, a squirrel, and several birds such as helmeted guineafowl.

We made a brief stop at a corridor, which was quite tense. This corridor ran right between the mountains and hills across a flat area. High-voltage power lines had been placed here, and because it was so open, robberies of cars and matatus (local minibuses) often took place. These robberies were carried out by armed bandits who came from far away and tried to extort money from passengers. According to Benjamin, people have even been killed here. We quickly recorded a very short video and then hurried back into the car, as it didn’t feel safe. Later, we suddenly found ourselves on a paved highway! It does exist! We had about an hour left before arriving in the village of Archer’s Post. There we had lunch, which Benjamin had reserved in advance. Golden chairs had been set up for us, and once again we had rice, but this time with chicken instead of goat.

After lunch, we continued on to our next lodge—and what a difference compared to our previous hotel. A beautiful safari tent with an outdoor bathroom where hot water actually came from the tap. Yvonne was finally able to wash her hair. From the open restaurant we looked out over a wild river, with Saba National Park on the opposite side. While enjoying a drink, we spotted a troop of baboons, green vervet monkeys, a rock hyrax, and even a Goliath heron, yellow-billed stork, and black-headed heron. After dinner, tired but content, we crawled into bed, as tomorrow breakfast awaits us at 6 a.m.

30-08-2025 – Game Drive in Samburu National Park

This morning we got up very, very early (we had breakfast at 6 o’clock) to go on a game drive early in the nearby Samburu National Park. Early is best, because in the heat of the day there are fewer animals to spot. As soon as we entered the park, we quickly saw some secretary birds, but Benjamin had arranged to meet David and David a kilometre further on. The first one (but it could also have been the second) is head of ‘field operations’ at Save the Elephants, and also well known from the many videos that Save the Elephants posts on social media. The men took us along during their work: searching for and registering elephants in the park. Every elephant group was recorded in a tablet with coordinates and other details. Save the Elephants (STE) has about 1000 elephants individually registered based on physical characteristics. At the moment it is quite dry in Samburu and that is why most elephants are on the other side of the 200-kilometre-long corridor in Laikipia. A large number of them will, starting in October after the rains, move towards Samburu via, among other routes, ‘our’ corridor in Oldonyiro. So there are only about 200 elephants (residents) present in Samburu, and because of the food shortage, the existing family groups split into smaller groups. David and David know exactly which elephants belong together, often by heart, and sometimes with the help of the tablet. Very impressive! Some elephants also wear a collar with a transmitter, the data and location of these elephants is automatically entered into the tablet.

Soon we came across a very large family group of elephants, including many calves. This year alone, 100 calves have already been born in Samburu. How impressive it is to see this in the wild. A little later we drove quite a distance along the river and found behind a lot of bushes another small group of elephants and solitary bulls. Some came very close! You can tell these elephants are somewhat used to people and therefore much more relaxed. In the areas between the parks, where many people live and herders move around, they are more fearful and can also be more dangerous, as we had already heard last week in Oldonyiro. Of course, we also encountered many more animals such as reticulated giraffes, warthogs, crocodiles, dik-diks, lions, Grant’s gazelles, gemsbok, many birds and… to our great joy… gerenuks! These special gazelles live only in Northern Kenya. The gerenuk is also called the giraffe gazelle because of its long neck. These animals avoid food competition with other gazelles by standing upright on their hind legs and eating the leaves that are too high for other gazelles. With their forelegs they pull the higher branches a bit further down.

At the end of the morning we arrived at the camp of Save the Elephants. There we received an interesting tour from David. We had not expected the camp to be this large. There were various buildings such as staff quarters, a kitchen, offices and an education room where they receive schools. There was also storage of new collars to be placed and an ‘archive’ of old transmitter collars. There was also the wreck of a jeep that had been attacked by a frustrated elephant bull. The car had been rolled over several times by the elephants and eventually the elephant even pierced his tusk through the floor plate and roof of the car. We were amazed that the two staff members got out alive. Fortunately so. In one of the offices there was a wall with a map of Kenya. On this map there were an incredible number of red lines representing the movement routes of all tracked elephants in the last 30 years. It doesn’t take much imagination to see in this a giant elephant ear full of veins and blood vessels. If you cut one of those vessels, for example the narrow corridor at Oldonyiro, the ‘blood flow stops’ and the ecosystem becomes unbalanced. This shows once again how important the safeguarding of this part of the corridor is.

The team prepared a delicious lunch for us. For the first time this week, we had French fries! Also a tasty salad of avocado and tomato and a fresh smoothie. After lunch we checked if our video recordings were good because it was quite windy. But the images and sound were fine. The Save the Elephants camp borders a river where we enjoyed sitting in the shade for an hour. Enjoying the beautiful view, the many birds and the rock hyraxes around us.

31-08-2025 - Grévy’s zebras, Beisa oryx, reticulated giraffes and… elephants!

Today we could finally sleep in… at last! A relaxed morning in the restaurant, enjoying the view while sorting through the many videos we’ve recorded. These will later be turned into longer films for social media, the website, and for use in the park. When you see as much as we have, you automatically end up with an incredible number of gigabytes of material. Fortunately, sending the video folders here goes reasonably fast, at least ten times quicker than via Benjamin’s phone hotspot.

While sorting, with a view over the river below, we kept getting distracted by a crocodile that, unlike most, actually moved around. A reckless hamerkop even strolled just 1.5 meters away from the crocodile. It looked like it had a death wish, but the crocodile didn’t seem hungry. The reptile regularly took a dip, reappeared in a different spot, and then crawled back onto the bank. There are certainly worse office views.

After lunch, Benjamin and John picked us up for a game drive in Samburu National Park. We needed a few more shots of walking Grévy’s zebras and Beisa oryx, since we hadn’t captured them yesterday, or perhaps we’d simply forgotten in all the elephant excitement. This afternoon was full of surprises again. Besides searching for Grévy’s zebras, we had also asked Benjamin to help us look for a leopard. That took quite some time. We scanned countless trees, rocks, and bushes… but unfortunately no luck. With the Grévy’s zebras we were more fortunate: a large bachelor herd passed right in front of us. We also saw many Beisa oryx. This antelope looks very similar to the gemsbok in our Safari Park, but it is a different species. The Beisa lives in East Africa, while the gemsbok inhabits more southern regions. We also spotted a large group of reticulated giraffes and once again many birds.

But of course, we had to end this day, and also our stay in Samburu, with… elephants. They remain the highlight, and we really couldn’t get enough of them. Tired but satisfied, we crashed at the restaurant for dinner and a drink, before finally heading to bed. Tomorrow we’ll be up early again, slowly beginning our journey back toward Nairobi.

01-09-2025 – the last two northern white rhinos in the world

This morning we woke up for the last time in Archer’s Post, had our final delicious breakfast overlooking the river, and for the last time enjoyed the regular residents of this part of the river… the crocodile, the Goliath heron, the yellow-billed stork and the baboons. At 9:00 a.m. we were picked up by our new friends Benjamin and John for the three-hour drive towards Nanyuki. Along the way there was plenty to see again: goats on the back of a motorbike, a large group of dromedaries on the (high-)road, even a big shepherd dog on the back of a motorbike. They are certainly creative here. Another thing that stood out on the way was the perfect asphalt road and the vast fields with crops such as tobacco, sunflowers, and wheat. A completely different landscape. And Nanyuki itself is also quite different from the places of the past days. Life there is a little more developed. It is a village, but with the allure of a city. The streets are busy, everywhere little shops, stalls with vegetables or meat, an open-air furniture boulevard… but still aimed at Kenyans, since hardly any tourists come here.

So half a travel day and half a free day. We spent it in an interesting way. Thanks to the contacts that Beekse Bergen and we ourselves have with the Czech Safari Park Dvur Králové (Czech Republic), we were able to pay a special visit to Ol Pejeta Conservancy. An enormous reserve, surrounded by a fence because of the many white and black rhinos living there. Once through the gate it was about half an hour’s drive to Morani, a small resting place in the park with a restaurant, souvenir shop, education center, and the place where rangers wait for their guests. Thanks to our Czech friends we had an appointment with ranger Peter to see the last remaining northern white rhinos (in the world!). These two female animals, Najin and Fatu, are 36 and 25 years old, mother and daughter, and both come from the Czech Safari Park Dvur Králové. They came to Ol Pejeta in a last attempt to save the species, but unfortunately their male companion Sudan died a few years ago. However, embryos have been frozen, also from another male, which can be implanted into a southern white rhino. So possibly in the future there may be offspring of this subspecies again. But of course, they were not taken from their original area without reason. Wars and political instability make a reintroduction in the near future anything but easy.

How special that we were still able to see these animals up close, accompanied by a ranger. They are really well protected, you can’t just walk in, and they are guarded 24/7. The two females were accompanied by a southern white rhino cow. The physical differences between the two subspecies were now clearly visible. The northern ones have a longer tail, much more hair on the ears, a straighter back, shorter legs, and the horns are set slightly farther apart than those of the southern ones we also have in Beekse Bergen. Another thing learned…

The rest of the afternoon we went looking for other animal species on the vast savannahs in this enormous park. Due to lack of time, we only saw about 25% of the park, but it was magnificent. We came across, among others, black rhinos, also with a calf, white rhinos, plains zebras, hartebeest, Defassa waterbucks, African spoonbills, Thomson’s gazelles, reticulated giraffes, impalas, Cape buffalo, and… elephants. Since we were there anyway, we had to enjoy it. And driving straight to Nairobi in one go would have been a bit too much. Where we had a paved road today, tomorrow’s four-hour drive will mostly be a bumpy dirt track.

When we arrived at the hotel after this game drive, it was really time to say goodbye to John and Benjamin. And that is genuinely difficult when you have spent so much time together, there is so much mutual respect, and they have done everything to give us an unforgettable time. But that’s part of it, unfortunately. But… in 2 years Benjamin will be back in the Netherlands to complete his PhD at the University of Twente, so we will definitely see him again.

02-09-2025 - one last adventure, and the return to the Netherlands

At 9 o’clock our driver was ready, that was the plan. According to African custom he was half an hour late, but he had already left Nairobi 4 hours earlier towards Nanyuki. The traffic went smoothly for all of us and around half past one we arrived at the Giraffe Centre in Nairobi. We had expected a bit more here. There were a number of giraffes that every visitor was allowed to give some pellets. That seems a bit commercial, but still we had the impression that all proceeds really do go to the preservation of giraffes and nature restoration in Kenya. To give nature conservation an even bigger boost we also had lunch here and bought some souvenirs.

After this visit we still had a lot of time left and looked for ‘something fun’ to kill the time. This turned out to be Nairobi National Park. To our surprise it was really a very large park with an area of 175 km². Remarkable also that in many places you have the skyscrapers of Nairobi in the same view as, for example, zebras, and that a kilometer-long railway bridge runs right through the national park. Here a train passes about 2 to 3 times a day, the bridge was built by the Chinese. We noticed that many of these kinds of logistical investments are financed by China.

We encountered crocodiles, hippos, rhinos, ostriches and various smaller birds, but we were actually looking for the lions. And we found them, right at the end, at dusk. There were 4 lions with enormously full bellies resting without moving much further. At least you can say you’ve seen them. The park closes at 6.30 pm, but we did not make it because of the huge distances. In the almost dark, every 100 meters there was an owl on the road, looking at us curiously, until we wanted to take a picture...