Elsa the lioness lived and died here. Meru is where Joy Adamson wrote Born Free. It is also one of Kenya's least-visited big parks despite holding excellent predator numbers and the Tana River running through it.
Meru is the park that most Kenya safari visitors have never been to. It is 400 kilometres from Nairobi, accessible only by charter aircraft to the park airstrip or by a long drive up the Mount Kenya eastern slopes. That distance is precisely why the experience is what it is: excellent game, almost no other vehicles, and a landscape of palm-fringed streams running into the Tana River that feels genuinely remote.
The park was devastated by poaching in the 1980s, closed for fifteen years, and has been carefully rebuilt since 2000. The Big Five are all present. The rhino population, reintroduced from South Africa, is now self-sustaining.
Highlights
Born Free Country
Elsa's grave is in the park. The landscape that Joy Adamson described is largely unchanged.
Tana River Palm Belt
The Tana and its tributaries run through the park. Palm-fringed channels with hippo, crocodile, and doum palms.
Remote Camp
Your camp has seen fewer visitors than most. Staff ratio is 3:1. You are unlikely to see another vehicle.
Charter Access Only
No practical road access from Nairobi. The isolation is the point — and the airstrip is thirty minutes from Wilson.
What's Included
Itinerary
Price from
From $3,800
per person · all-inclusive
