Activities and rules
Things to do in Samburu, Buffalo Springs and Shaba
Game drives along the Ewaso Ng'iro are the core of a visit, and the river is what makes them work. Everything beyond that turns on one question: whether you are standing in a county reserve or in a community conservancy, because the two run under different rules. Night drives are the clearest example.
If you only want the answer
Game drives along the Ewaso Ng'iro, where the elephants come to drink and the riverine bush holds your best chance of leopard. Night drives, walking and off-road driving happen in the community conservancies next door, Westgate, Kalama and Namunyak, and not in the three reserves. Samburu County does price a walking safari, bush breakfast or bush dinner at KES 1,600 per person per day, so walking inside the reserve is possible, though no county publishes the rules for it. For culture, the conservancies are Samburu-owned and the Umoja Uaso women's village sits just outside Archer's Gate.
Game drives, and the three reserves you are driving in
Samburu National Reserve sits on the north bank of the Ewaso Ng'iro, Buffalo Springs faces it across the water on the south bank, and Shaba lies to the east, past Archer's Post. They are small: Buffalo Springs is 131 km2, Shaba is 239 km2, and Samburu itself is given as either 165 km2 or 104 km2 depending on which source you read, a conflict nobody has resolved. Together they are a fraction of the size of Tsavo, and that is why a drive here is river work rather than distance work.
The river drives the game viewing. In the dry months it is the only permanent water in the landscape, so elephants come down to drink and cross daily, and the strip of doum palms and riverine bush along it is where the leopard chances are. Save the Elephants has run its research camp on the edge of Samburu National Reserve since 1997 and has more than 900 individually identified elephants using these reserves, which gives you an idea of how much traffic that riverbank carries.
The one thing to sort out before you drive is tickets. Samburu National Reserve belongs to Samburu County and charges a non-resident adult $85. Buffalo Springs and Shaba belong to Isiolo County and charge $70. Two counties, two finance acts, two amounts, and no published agreement that one ticket is honoured by the other, so budget for paying twice if you intend to cross the bridge.
Night drives, walking and off-road: reserve or conservancy
Night drives are not available inside the three reserves. The gates run from 06:00 to 18:00 and the reserves close to visitors after dark, so anyone selling you a night drive here is selling you a drive in a community conservancy next door.
That is the general rule and it is worth holding on to. The conservancies that ring the reserves, Westgate to the west, Kalama to the east around Archer's Post, Namunyak further north around the southern flank of the Mathews Range, are community land under the Northern Rangelands Trust rather than county reserves. Guests there can do things the reserves prohibit: night drives, walking safaris and driving off the tracks.
The trade runs both ways. A conservancy charges its own fee, usually collected by the camp and built into the nightly rate, and staying in one gives you no right to drive in Samburu, Buffalo Springs or Shaba. Drive into a reserve from a conservancy camp and you pay the reserve fee on top, on each day you go in. Namunyak is a separate destination rather than a day trip, at roughly 850,000 acres around the Mathews Range and a long way north of the reserves.
Walking, and what the law actually says about it
Walking is not banned in Samburu National Reserve. The Samburu County fee schedule carries a line for a walking safari, bush dinner or bush breakfast at KES 1,600 per person per day, which means the county prices the activity rather than prohibits it. Camps in the conservancies run walking as a standard part of a stay, and one camp in Kalama is described as a rustic base for walking safaris, though we could find no website, no rate and no second source for it.
What is missing is everything around that number. Neither county publishes how a walk is to be conducted: whether an armed ranger is required, whether there is a minimum age, how large a group may be, or where walking is permitted inside the reserve. We could not find those rules in either finance act or on either county website, so arrange a walk through your camp and have them confirm with the warden.
The same schedule licenses the people who take you out: a guide certificate costs KES 6,000 per person per year, and a conservancy licence KES 60,000 per year. Filming is priced separately at KES 24,000 a day for a crew of one to ten, rising to KES 56,000 for twenty or more, and the 2025 finance bill proposes lifting those to KES 50,000 and KES 150,000, so check before you arrive with a camera rig that looks professional.
Culture, and doing it without the zoo effect
The land around the reserves is Samburu community land, and the conservancy model here is the thing to understand before you visit a village. Saruni Samburu opened in Kalama in 2008 as the first lodge in that conservancy and is usually credited as the breakthrough for community ecotourism in northern Kenya. Basecamp Samburu joined it in January 2025. Westgate, formerly the Ngutuk Ongiron Group Ranch, has Sasaab and a community campsite. In each case the conservancy fee you pay goes to the community that owns the land, which is a more direct arrangement than a tip at the end of a dance.
The most straightforward cultural stay is Umoja Uaso Women's Group, a Samburu women's village just outside Archer's Gate on the edge of Archer's Post, which runs simple bandas, tents and a campsite. It sits outside both the reserves and the conservancies, so no reserve or conservancy fee applies to staying there. Reported prices vary widely between sources, from around $30 a night for a banda to $50 to $80 full board, and none of those figures comes from the owners, so ask directly.
Be straight about what we could not establish. No county publishes a price list for village visits, no code of conduct for photography or for what a village visit should include exists in any document we found, and we found no official guidance on what a fair payment looks like. Book cultural visits through a camp that can name the community it works with and say what the money does.
Things worth knowing before you go
- Gate hours of 06:00 to 18:00 are reported by every operator and appear in neither county's finance act. Treat them as reliable practice rather than published law, and get back before dark either way.
- Take a 4x4 with high clearance. The tracks are sandy and follow the riverbanks and the dry luggas, and after rain a lugga carries running water.
- Self-driving is allowed and a guide is not compulsory. You can hire a ranger at the gate to help find game. Some rental companies will not let their vehicles go north of Archer's Post, which is their policy rather than a reserve rule.
- eCitizen is the Kenya Wildlife Service system and these are not KWS reserves, so it is not the way in here. Samburu County runs its own collection system called Supa Pay, though we could not confirm whether it is used at the gates.
- Ask for an official receipt. Isiolo's finance legislation requires one for every payment and instructs the payer to demand it, which is your only proof that you paid the legal rate.
- Ngare Mara Gate serves Buffalo Springs rather than Samburu, and there is no Ngwesi Gate on Buffalo Springs. Il Ngwesi is a separate conservancy in Laikipia.
What the research could not confirm
- Whether a Samburu ticket is honoured in Buffalo Springs. Three sources give three answers, one county official document says nothing about the other county, and no agreement between the two has been published.
- How long a ticket is valid. Neither finance act states a validity period, so the widely repeated 24 hours has no legal text behind it.
- Whether the bridge over the Ewaso Ng'iro is open in 2026. It was repaired and reopened in February 2015 and no washout has been reported since, but no official confirmation for this year exists.
- What the gates accept as payment. The law says only that payment goes to the county through an authorised channel. Operators variously claim that cash in dollars or shillings is fine at the gate and that cash is accepted nowhere, and neither claim has a source behind it.
- The age at which a child pays the child rate. Neither county defines it, and the age brackets quoted by tour operators have no basis in either document.
- Whether a scheduled flight serves any Shaba airstrip. Nothing we read confirms one.