Kenya · three reserves, two counties

Samburu National Reserve Independent Guides & Information

Name: Samburu National Reserve
Address: Kenya

North of the equator the Ewaso Ng'iro cuts a green line through dry country, and five animals live along it that you will not find in the Mara or Amboseli. What almost nobody tells you is that the land on either side of that river is run by two different county governments charging two different prices.

Browse lodges & camps What each reserve charges

Photo: Daniel Case (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The entry fees read straight from the county finance legislation, for all three reserves

Every lodge with the reserve it is actually in, not the one in its name

Population figures with the census and the year they came from

The three official travel advisories quoted in full, not summarised

Where Samburu, Buffalo Springs and Shaba sit, and which gate you want

Samburu National Reserve lies on the north bank of the Ewaso Ng'iro, with Buffalo Springs facing it across the river and Shaba further east past Archer's Post. All three sit a few hours' drive north of Nairobi on tarmac the whole way, through Isiolo and Archer's Post.

OpenStreetMap (Nominatim & Overpass), checked 2026-09-21. 5 gates and barriers. Touch or hover any point.

Samburu in Kenya, in ochre. The paler ochre shapes are the other parks in this country we write about; the green ones are its remaining national parks.

Pan with a hide or viewing platform
Dam
Gate or barrier on the map
Tarred trunk road

The full map, with coordinates and offline use →

Why this guide exists, and where the numbers come from

What it costs to visit Every lodge and campsite

This guide is written by someone who overlanded much of Africa in his own Land Cruiser with a rooftop tent, and for whom the national parks were what stayed. The information about them online was usually missing, wrong or years old: fees from three tariff sheets ago, camps that had closed, roads described by people who had never driven them.

So this guide runs on the park authority's own tariff document rather than a copied operator page, on thirty-year climate normals rather than brochure weather, and on what the camps tell us directly. Every claim carries a date. Where the county authorities are silent, so are we, apart from saying that they are silent.

Nothing here is for sale. Listing a camp is free and no position on any page can be bought. Some outbound links earn us a small commission, and that changes neither the order of a list nor a single figure on these pages.

Found something out of date? Tell us and it changes the same week.

Where to stay in Samburu, Buffalo Springs and Shaba

All 36 places to stay

Thirty-six lodges, camps and campsites across the three reserves and the conservancies around them. These four are not the best four; they are the four that mark out the range.

The cheapest way in

Samburu Public Campsite

From $25 pppn · inside the park

Twenty-five dollars a night on the Ewaso Ng'iro inside Samburu National Reserve, the county's own rate, paid in cash at the gate.

Community-run, and fee-free

Umoja Women's Camp

On request · outside the gate

A Samburu women's village just outside Archer's Gate, sitting outside every reserve and every conservancy, so nothing is due until you actually drive through a gate.

Mid-range, on the river

Elephant Bedroom Camp

On request · inside the park

Fourteen tents on the Ewaso Nyiro inside Samburu National Reserve, in the riverine strip the elephants use every day.

The top end, and fee-free at that

Saruni Samburu

From $800 · outside the gate

From $800 in Kalama Wildlife Conservancy on the reserve's eastern boundary, the first lodge built there, where a night in camp carries no reserve entry charge on its own.

Everything you need to plan a visit

Entry fees

$85 at Samburu, $70 at Buffalo Springs and Shaba, and why there is no combined ticket. Read from the county laws, because no 2026 tariff document exists.

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Which reserve is your camp in?

Several camps trading under the Samburu name sit in Buffalo Springs, which is a different county and a different price. Every entry says which.

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The Special Five

Grevy's zebra, reticulated giraffe, beisa oryx, gerenuk and Somali ostrich, with the census numbers behind each and what they are doing.

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Driving up from Nairobi

The A2 is tarmac all the way past Archer's Post. The gate turn-offs are not. What the three travel advisories say, word for word.

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Our own research

We priced every park in Africa

We collect the official tariff of every park we cover, convert it, and hold each one to the same standard day. Twenty-nine parks are in the index now, the famous ones included. These three pages come out of that table.

Where Samburu National Reserve sits in the index