Ndere Island National Park

Ndere Island National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Ndere is a small, uninhabited island in the Winam Gulf, the long arm of Lake Victoria that reaches into western Kenya, and it is visited as a half-day or day outing from the city of Kisumu, the country's third largest, which has an airport with several daily flights from Nairobi, fifty minutes away, and is otherwise six to seven hours by road. The park belongs to the Kenya Wildlife Service, and it is among the least visited and cheapest of the country's parks; fees are paid cashlessly, by mobile money or card, at the service's office. The usual approach is by road from Kisumu, about forty kilometres, an hour or so, westwards towards Bondo, turning off to the small park headquarters on the mainland shore at Kamuga bay, from where a boat crosses to the island in ten to twenty minutes;

alternatively, one can hire a boat for the whole journey from the Kisumu waterfront or from the fishing beaches near by, which takes an hour and a half or more each way and makes a pleasant cruise along the shore, past fishing canoes with lateen sails and the floating mats of water hyacinth that at times clog the gulf. The organised day trips sold in Kisumu include the transfer, the boat, the fees, a ranger or guide and, usually, a lunch of lake fish. On the island there are no roads and no vehicles, and the visit consists of a walk, accompanied by an armed ranger, along the trail that runs the length of the island over its grassy ridge, a matter of two to three hours at an easy pace, with a picnic site at the landing and another on the high ground. There is a basic campsite, without facilities, for those who bring everything with them, and no other accommodation.

Visiting Ndere Island National Park: what you will see

Ndere was gazetted as a national park in 1986 and covers a little over four square kilometres, a single hilly island about three kilometres long, lying at some 1,140 metres above sea level, the altitude of the lake. Its name means meeting place in Dholuo, the language of the Luo people who live all round the gulf, and in their tradition the island was the resting place of Mikayi, the first wife and mother of the people, who paused here on the long migration southwards from the Nile valley and found it so agreeable that she stayed; her name is attached also to Kit Mikayi, the great pile of balanced boulders on the mainland west of Kisumu. The island had been farmed and was cleared of its inhabitants when the park was created, and its vegetation today is mainly open grassland, golden for much of the year, with scattered trees and bush on the slopes, and a fringe of papyrus, reeds and ambatch along parts of the rocky shore. It is the views that visitors remember: from the ridge the eye ranges over the whole breadth of the gulf, to the Homa hills and the volcanic cone of Homa mountain on the southern shore, to Mageta island, and westwards towards the open lake and the distant hills of Uganda.

The wildlife is of a gentle kind, which is why the island can be explored on foot. Impala, which were introduced, are numerous and graze the open slopes in herds; the sitatunga, a shy, shaggy, splay-hoofed antelope adapted to life in swamps, is the speciality, hiding in the papyrus and seldom seen well; and there are olive baboons, vervet monkeys, warthogs, large monitor lizards basking on the rocks, snakes, among them pythons, and, offshore and in the bays, hippos, a few Nile crocodiles and spotted-necked otters. More than a hundred species of birds have been recorded, including the African fish eagle, whose ringing call is the sound of the lake, black-headed gonoleks, a scarlet and black bush-shrike of the lake basin, swamp flycatchers, papyrus specialists, kingfishers, cormorants, egrets and hammerkops. The lake itself, the largest in Africa and the source of the White Nile, has been transformed in a lifetime by the introduced Nile perch, which destroyed most of its hundreds of native cichlid fishes, and by the water hyacinth, and its level rose sharply from 2019, flooding shores and jetties all round the gulf.

Ndere Island National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open daily from 6 am to 6 pm. The driest and most comfortable periods are June to October and December to February, when the grass is short and the walking easy; the long rains, from March to May, and the short rains, in November, bring heavy afternoon thunderstorms, for which the Lake Victoria basin is notorious, tall grass that hides the path and the animals, and rough water. The lake is calmest in the early morning, and the wind and waves generally get up in the afternoon, so cross early and return by mid-afternoon;

insist on life jackets. There is no shade on the ridge and nothing for sale on the island, so bring a hat, sunscreen, plenty of water and food. Do not swim, because of bilharzia, hippos and crocodiles. Allow half a day to a day. Kisumu, with its impala sanctuary and the fish stalls of Dunga beach, is an hour away, Kit Mikayi forty minutes, the Kakamega rainforest an hour and a half north, and Ruma National Park, with roan antelope, three hours south.