About this guide
Who's behind Visit Samburu?
Three reserves, two county governments and two prices, read from the finance legislation rather than from a tour operator's rate sheet.
Who writes this
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 he started writing it down properly. This guide runs on the authorities' own documents, on climate normals rather than brochure weather, and on what the camps tell us directly, with a date on every claim.
What this site is
An independent guide to Samburu National Reserve and the two reserves next to it, Buffalo Springs and Shaba. Almost everything written about this destination treats the three as one place with one price. They are three reserves under two county governments, and the prices differ by fifteen dollars a head.
None of them is a KWS park, which is why the national tariff and the eCitizen booking system do not apply here and why so much of the standard Kenya advice misses.
How we handle disputed facts
The entry fees on this site come from the Samburu County Finance Act 2023 and the Isiolo County Finance Bill 2023, read directly. Neither county has published a tariff carrying 2026 on it, and Isiolo's county assembly website has been offline for some time, so its own Act is currently unreadable. We say that on the fees page rather than quietly quoting a number.
Population figures carry the census they came from and the year it was counted, because several of the animals here are declining and a figure from 2018 tells you the opposite of a figure from 2025. Where the only source we could find for a number was other travel websites quoting each other, we say so instead of joining in.
Found something outdated? Tell us and we will fix it.
Related guides
We publish independent guides to a number of Africa's quieter parks. Samburu is one of our two Kenyan ones, alongside Tsavo. The rest cover Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana and South Africa.