Africa & Middle East > Kenya > Mt Kenya & Aberdares > Laikipia > Articles > Kenya's Laikipia Plateau

Laikipia lies on the threshold of Kenya's wild Northern Frontier Province. It is an enormous area, stretching from the slopes of Mt Kenya to the rim of the Great Rift Valley, and is larger than all Kenya's game reserves and national parks except Tsavo.

Although divided into a mosaic of farms and cattle ranches established by turn-of-the-century English settlers, Laikipia is still essentially a wilderness, a wildlife refuge the size of Wales, supporting huge numbers of game. It has one of the largest elephant populations in East Africa - 2,000-plus at the last count - and is one of the last strongholds of the highly endangered black rhino. It is also the only part of Kenya in which wildlife numbers have actually increased over the past 20 years. Yet in tourist terms, compared to game reserves such as the Masai Mara, Laikipia has remained unknown.

Now things are changing fast as ranchers and indigenous tribespeople alike have begun to discover that wildlife tourism is more economical than struggling to raise livestock in Laikipia's drought-prone bush country. Today, several of the biggest ranches are managed as private game reserves, offering some of the most luxurious and exclusive safari lodges to be found anywhere in Africa. Among them are Ol Malo and Loisaba, both with swimming pools, Stephano Cheli's up-market tented camp surrounded by 48,000 acres of wildlife at Mugie, and the Mukutan Retreat, an elegant hideaway at Ol Ari Nyiro, the 100,000-acre home of Kuki Gallmann, whose haunting autobiography, ‘I Dreamed of Africa’, was recently made into a film staring Kim Basinger.

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