Month by month
Samburu in July
July is the mildest month of the dry season. Days average 30.2°C, the lowest of the ten months outside the short rains, nights 19.0°C, and rainfall 3 mm with no wet day on the average. It is the middle of the long dry season and the most comfortable month to spend outside.
If you only want the answer
Excellent game viewing in the dry season's gentlest heat, with more company than June. In weather terms July is almost indistinguishable from the months either side of it, so what really changes this month is demand, as the European summer arrives and the camps fill.
The gentlest month of the dry season
July's normals are 3 mm of rain, days of 30.2°C and nights of 19.0°C. Only November and December are cooler in the afternoon, and both are in the middle of the short rains, so among the dry months July is as comfortable as it gets, more than two degrees below September's 32.4°C, and it is the difference between a midday you can work through and a midday you have to sit out.
Honesty about the rest: in weather terms July has little to distinguish it from June or August. June carries 5 mm and 30.9°C, August 2 mm and 30.8°C, and all three record no full wet day on the thirty-year average. Anyone telling you these months behave differently from one another is describing a distinction the climate data does not support.
Where the pressure goes
What does change is how busy it is. High season on the Nairobi flights runs from 16 June to 31 October, and the European summer lands on top of that. Sarara, the one camp in this region with a public rate card, moves from $1,110 per person a night in the quiet months to $1,515 in July and August, which is the clearest published signal of where the peak sits.
These are small reserves, so pressure shows. Buffalo Springs is 131 km2 and Shaba 239 km2, with Samburu itself given as either 165 km2 or 104 km2 depending on the source, and in the dry months most vehicles are working the same riverbank. Shaba, east of Archer's Post and with a single regular lodge inside it, is the quietest of the three.
The booking arithmetic
Book the camps before you book the flights, since the flights here are a circuit rather than a shuttle. Safarilink runs two to three services a day from Nairobi Wilson, subject to a minimum of four passengers per service and two per airstrip, and AirKenya runs one each way, P2 871 out at 09:45 and P2 872 back at 11:00. Both call at several northern strips on the way, and AirKenya advises phoning operations on the day of departure because published times show the first stop.
Driving is the alternative and it works. The A2 through Nanyuki, Isiolo and Archer's Post is tarmac the whole way, published distances range from 300 to 355 km, and six to seven hours is the honest figure. Leave Nairobi early, because the gates shut at 18:00.