The Maasai and Samburu of Laikipia, Kenya believe standing on the peak of Ol Lentille Mountain brings you closer to God. In times of drought, the women in the surrounding communities make the trek to the top to sing, raising their prayers for rain into the sky. I’ve been led up here in the day’s last honeyed light by my Maasai guide, Solomon Saidimu. While I don’t sing, there is a feeling of holiness in the monumental rock beneath my feet and the rolling green hills running toward the horizon.
At Ol Lentille, a community-owned lodge and 40,000-acre nature conservancy, every walk and game drive is threaded with cultural stories and traditional knowledge that imbue the landscape with a sense of divinity. Here, offerings of precious milk are poured over the roots of sacred fig trees and into the serpentine Tura River. The Indigenous reverence for nature is one that any travel planning a trip to Kenya should take heed of.
A view of Ol Lentille Mountain.Photo: Stevie Mann
Home to the Great Migration and the famous “Big Five” animals, Kenya tops the wish list for many safari enthusiasts—so much so that it’s becoming a problem. In late 2022, a video surfaced on Twitter showing a swarm of vehicles crowding cheetahs to witness a high-octane chase and kill, part of a growing issue where overzealous safari-goers in the Maasai Mara National Reserve—the country’s most popular destination—put animals at risk to get the perfect shot.
A growing body of evidence shows that overtourism in the Maasai Mara threatens wildlife (a 2018 study outlined how overtourism reduces the number of cheetahs that survive into adulthood, for example, while wildebeest numbers are dwindling due to overdevelopment). Even though tourism is far more controlled in the private conservancies surrounding the reserve, the Mara’s unparalleled popularity still means large swaths of the country aren’t benefiting fully from ecotourism—a lifeline for many people in Kenya—and other protected wilderness areas that are trying to expand may not be receiving the attention they deserve. I knew I wanted to discover another side of Kenya when I traveled there.