After Dark in Samburu: Kenya’s Night-Drive Wildlife

By Safari News — Africa Calling Safaris, Partner desk, Nairobi · 06/10/2025

Updated 23 October 2026

Daytime game drives, however rewarding, show only part of Samburu’s wildlife. Kenya Wildlife Service rules bar driving after 7:00 p.m. inside national parks and reserves, but the private conservancies ringing Samburu National Reserve — among them Kalama, Sera and Il Ngwesi — permit licensed night drives, opening access to species that stay hidden until dusk, from civets and genets to bushbabies and honey badgers.

Data gathered by Africa Calling Safaris from more than 340 night drives in Samburu between 2017 and 2024 puts leopard sightings at 61 percent after dark, against 19 percent on daytime outings, making the conservancy routes the most reliable way to see the cat in northern Kenya. The shyer striped hyena, for which Samburu is a regional stronghold, and occasional porcupines and aardvarks also feature. Spotted hyenas, capable of eating up to 14 kilograms of meat at a sitting and hauling prey heavier than themselves, dominate the soundscape once the sun sets.

Samburu National Reserve itself covers 165 square kilometres, with surrounding conservancies adding roughly 7,000 square kilometres of managed habitat home to species absent from the Masai Mara — reticulated giraffe, Grevy’s zebra, Beisa oryx and Somali ostrich. Night drives typically run two hours from 7:00 p.m., with warm layers recommended as temperatures drop quickly in the arid north.

Travellers connecting from Europe or the Caucasus generally reach Samburu via Nairobi, with onward light-aircraft transfers to conservancy airstrips arranged by local operators.

Based on reporting by Safari News, the travel desk of Africa Calling Safaris (Nairobi), GTour’s partner for East Africa. Read the original there.