In November 2023, we visited Amboseli National Park as part of a tour of a few national parks. It's the season of the short rains and you can be lucky or unlucky with the weather. For most of the safari, we were indeed lucky, but in Amboseli, we experienced some serious rain. While it impacted our wildlife viewing there was a much bigger, more important picture. For the previous 2-3 years, Kenya had been gripped by a serious drought which had killed a large number of elephants in Amboseli and had almost wiped out the herds of grazing antelope and zebra; their skeletons were scattered everywhere and made a sobering sight.
Thankfully, with the rains returning so has the fresh grazing, although the swamps still looked a shadow of what we saw in 2019. It's going to take some time for the herds to re-establish themselves, but even in such an impoverished condition, Amboseli delivers remarkable elephant sightings.
A small herd making its way through the morning deluge toward Amboseli swamp
While Kilimanjaro remained shrouded in low clouds, dramatic skies and spectacular elephant encounters abound