Nestled away Meru National Park is a hidden treasure

The wide girth of the Nyambene Hills fill the western sky, as we reach the top of Gatwe Hill close to iKweta Tented Camp, our abode for the night. Since it’s outside the park, we’ve enjoyed a hike up the sacred hill for a 360-degree view of the land that we will explore for the next two days.

Our mission on day one is to reach the mighty Tana, Kenya’s longest river that starts its journey from the Aberdares and Mt Kenya. It’s the boundary between the two national parks now linked by a steel bridge named in memory of George Adamson, fondly remembered as Bwana Simba, who made Kora his home with the lions that he hoped would find safe space in this wilderness. However, as things go, we’ve had lots of interruptions on the road and make it to Kora early afternoon, crossing over the gleaming steel bridge.

Until this was built in the 1990s, it took Adamson and his assistant Tony Fitzjohn, a bone-breaking ten-hour drive to Meru National Park on rough roads. Now a quick drive over the earth coloured river flowing over the Adamson Rapids, has us in Kora and we hasten to the cable bridge built in 1965 that once boasted a cable-cart. The frame is intact allowing the more adventurous to clamber up for a birds-eye view of the river.

Bwana Simba’s Kora

En route, a young male elephant at a mud hole, sucking in of muddy water with his trunk to spray a shower over his frame. Sun-bleached grass gives way to dense scrub of the slow growing commiphora trees sprinkled with acacias and baobabs. Approaching Kora, we catch glimpses of the spiral-horned lesser kudu, stately Reticulated giraffes, dikdiks, camels and domesticated herds led by pastoralists for a drink at the Tana.

Day two, the saffron sun lights the savannah plains to reveal sun-drenched grass and towering Doum palms with their unique style of forked branches lining Meru’s meandering rivers.

In this great wilderness we could be the only humans on earth. A spotted hyena and silver-backed jackals surface.

Female elephants with their young graze close to the road, unperturbed by our presence. It’s so different from my visit two decades ago. The park that had once boasted numerous black rhinos and mighty herds of elephants, had been wiped clean by poachers. The few elephants that survived the poachers’ guns, were so traumatised that on hearing a vehicle, they fled to hide.

Past the elephants, vultures, mostly the White-backed with a few Lappet-faced take centre-stage, perched on trees, waiting for the sun to warm the air so that they can rise with the thermals to soar the skies.

Their reason for them being here is the carcass of a buffalo on the ground. Silver-backed jackals scavenge on what is left. By the swamps and dams, are flocks of Black-headed herons, pure white egrets, jewelled kingfishers and the eagles soaring above – the bateleurs.

Verreaux’s eagle owls with droopy pink eyelids stay perched in a fig tree.

The afternoon is reserved for the rhino sanctuary, simply because the mega-herbivore is more active as it gets cooler. We tick ten southern White rhinos as the day wanes, browsing away in a safe haven with a lone male who appears from wallowing in the mud bath.

Meru is amazing with her 14 rivers flowing through the park from the Nyambene Hills.

Without the Nyambenes, there would be no Meru for she’s the water tower that supports all life in Meru.

What to do in Meru

Check into iKweta Tented Camp, a two-minute drive from Murera Gate. It’s unpretentious with spacious tented accommodation and a list of hikes and explorations outside the park.

You can circle Mt. Kenya. Drive via the rice fields of Mwea, the winding road from Embu to Meru and return via Nanyuki. The Embu road is slow and can take up to seven hours.

You need at least three nights in Meru – we only covered one part of the park – Elsa the lioness and Pippa the cheetah – the two cats that Joy Adamson rehabilitated to the wild are buried in the park.

Kora National Park has little infrastructure.