Stuart is an award-winning travel journalist covering safari, trekking and conservation in Kenya and Tanzania for the Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, BBC, Bradt Travel Guides, amongst many others. He is the author of Walking With The Maasai, a journey through some of Kenya's lesser-visited Maasai lands.
Another of western Kenya’s unsung wildlife highlights is the seriously off the beaten track Ruma National Park.
This park is a mixture of dense forest and thick, tall tropical grassland where large numbers of rare, and very beautiful, Rothschild giraffe can be found, as well as the massive, elegant roan antelope. On any visit here you will see plenty of these two creatures.
What you almost certainly won’t see however are the park’s rhino population. Rangers have told me there are quite a few here – all translocated from less secure areas – but in my three visits I’ve never seen any and the rangers tell me you have to be very lucky to see one.
But there’s something else you won’t see here either: other tourists. Once again I think that each time I have been I have had the entire park to myself and this makes for a very compelling reason to make the trek out here.
There are no facilities for tourists within the park, and only a few specialist operators will offer Ruma in a safari itinerary.
At a glance
Destinations
Ruma National Park
Activity
Safari
