Aberdare National Park

Aberdare National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

The Aberdares are the forested range north of Nairobi, two and a half hours from the capital, and the park is sold in two ways: as the tree-hotel night, the stay at The Ark or Treetops in the Salient, where the animals come to a floodlit waterhole below the lodge through the night and guests are woken by a buzzer for the elephants and the rhinos, which is the classic and is booked as a two-day package from Nairobi with a game drive on the way; and as part of the three- to five-day central Kenya circuits that combine the Aberdares with Ol Pejeta, Samburu, Lake Nakuru or Naivasha. The day safaris from Nairobi and from Nyeri drive up into the moorlands for the waterfalls and the mountain scenery and are long but rewarding;

the treetop canopy walk is the Ark's new addition. Park fees are charged per person per day and per vehicle at the gates and are included in the packages; a 4×4 is needed for the moorland roads, especially after rain, and self-drivers with one can enter at the Treetops, Ark or Ruhuruini gates and drive the loop, with a KWS ranger optional. The fishing in the trout streams needs a permit from the park. The park is a forest and mountain safari rather than a plains one, and the game viewing is slower and closer, which suits second-time visitors to Kenya more than first-timers who want the Mara.

Visiting Aberdare National Park: what you will see

The park was created in 1950 and covers 766 square kilometres of the Aberdare range, the mountains on the eastern wall of the Rift Valley with the summit of Ol Donyo Lesatima at 3,999 metres, in two parts: the Salient, the low eastern arm of forest above Nyeri where the tree hotels stand, and the high moorlands above 3,000 metres, a landscape of tussock grass, giant heather, groundsel and lobelia, bogs and trout streams that fall over the escarpments in waterfalls, the Karuru falls at 273 metres in three steps the highest in Kenya, and the Gura falls opposite. The forest of the Salient holds elephants, buffalo, giant forest hogs, bushbuck, waterbuck, colobus and Sykes' monkeys and the black rhinos that come to the waterholes at night, with leopards and the rare bongo antelope and golden cat almost never seen;

the moorlands have eland, serval, the Aberdare cisticola and the Jackson's francolin, and the lions of the high plateau. The Treetops hotel is where Princess Elizabeth was staying in February 1952 when her father died and she became queen, and the original was burned by the Mau Mau fighters who used the forest as their base in the 1950s, with Dedan Kimathi captured on its edge. The park is fenced along its whole boundary by the Rhino Ark charity's electric fence, four hundred kilometres built by public subscription to stop the elephants raiding the farms and the farmers cutting the forest, and the fence and its gates are part of the park's story. The Kinangop plateau on the western side looks over the Rift, and the road across the park from Nyeri to Naivasha, the highest in Kenya, crosses the moorland above the clouds.

Aberdare National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The gates open at 6 am and close at 6 pm, with the tree hotels checking guests in from the base hotels at Nyeri in the early afternoon. The dry seasons from January to February and from June to September give the best roads and the most animals at the waterholes;

the rains from March to May and October to November make the moorland tracks impassable without a 4×4 and shroud the peaks in mist, though the waterfalls are at their fullest and the forest is green. The mountains are cold at night in every month. Allow one night in a tree hotel or a full day for the moorlands, and two days to combine both. Mount Kenya is across the valley to the east, Ol Pejeta an hour north, and Nairobi two and a half hours south.