Amboseli National Park is a profoundly biodiverse expanse of land in the cultural territory of the Maasai Nation, which spans the border with Tanzania. Continuing their historical ways as pastoralist herders of cattle and sheep, the Maasai are ever-present in their Amboseli region homelands. As you will learn, interacting with them is a highlight that graces the journeys of visitors to several national parks in Kenya. Amboseli’s name is derived from the Maa language of the Maasai, meaning “salty dust”. Many of the lakes in this region of East Africa are saline and partly (or completely) disappear during the dry season, resulting in dust clouds.

While Amboseli is considered relatively small, especially when compared to some of Kenya’s other reserves and parks such as the famous Masai Mara National Park, it remains a long-standing highlight of Kenya’s safari circuit. Well known for its high density of elephants, the Amboseli National Park forms the unfenced core of an 8,000 km2 ecosystem that includes large tracts of Maasai community land both in Kenya and across the border in Tanzania..