Tsavo East

Tsavo East National Park was created in 1948 in south-eastern Kenya and at some 13,747 km² it is the country's largest national park. Together with Tsavo West, from which it is separated by the Nairobi to Mombasa road and railway, it forms the largest protected block in Kenya.

It is a territory of arid and semi-arid savannah, flatter and drier than its western neighbour, with acacia and commiphora scrub and large expanses of open ground. It is crossed by the Yatta lava plateau, a basalt flow some three hundred kilometres long regarded as one of the longest lava flows in the world, and by the Galana River, which runs through the park and forms the Lugard Falls.

Its elephants are famous for the reddish colour of their skin, the result of rolling in the laterite dust of the ground. The Tsavo population was one of the hardest hit on the continent during the poaching crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, which cut elephant numbers by more than 80%; it has partly recovered since. The park is also home to lion, buffalo, beisa oryx, gerenuk and an abundant birdlife, and its springs at Aruba and Mudanda are gathering points for wildlife in the dry season.