Kenya Photos

Kenya

Photograph by Jen Eudy, My Shot

Sunset falls on a Maasai boy on Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve.

Mount Kilimanjaro

Photograph by Steven Pollack, My Shot

With Mount Kilimanjaro as a backdrop, a lone elephant wanders through Amboseli National Reserve. Upon reaching sexual maturity, young male elephants are no longer welcome among their female relatives and must instead seek out other young bulls to ally with.

Samburu Wedding

Photograph by Michael Nichols

In keeping with tradition, Samburu families arrange marriages for their daughters when they’re as young as ten. The entire community celebrates during several days of elaborate ceremonies designed to counteract superstitions and bring the new couple good luck.

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Giraffes

Photograph by Mitch Walters, My Shot

Rapid growth in the number of people living just outside the unfenced Masai Mara National Reserve threatens its giraffes, which compete with livestock for a diminishing food supply. Scientists say the giraffe population has fallen by more than half over the last three decades.

Samburu Bride

Photograph by Annie Katz/Getty Images

Beaded necklaces coil around the neck and shoulders of a young Samburu bride. Worn during other important ceremonies as well, such elaborate ornaments can be handed down from mother to daughter for generations.

African Lion

Photograph by Michael Nichols

A lion passes a row of vultures along a river's edge. The big cats once roamed most of the continent. Today they are found only in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Tusk Arches, Mombasa

Photograph by Ken Gillham/Photo Library

Two pairs of large aluminum tusks cross above Moi Avenue in Mombasa; they were erected to commemorate the 1956 visit of Britain’s Princess Margaret.

Flamingos, Lake Magadi

Photograph by Bobby Haas

As many as four million lesser flamingos (Phoeniconaias minor) live on the lakes scattered along Africa’s Great Rift Valley. The three-foot-tall (one-meter-tall) birds, the smallest of five flamingo species, live here in greater numbers than anywhere else on Earth.

Fishermen, Lake Turkana

Photograph by Nigel Pavitt/Photo Library

Men still fish with traditional handwoven nets along the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya’s northwest corner. Fossils of two Homo sapien ancestors more than a million years old were found east of the lake, and in 2007 scientists analyzing the fossils set off a controversy by theorizing that the two species had lived side by side in the region for around half a million years—and hadn’t evolved one from the other, as previously thought.

Mount Ololokwe

Photograph by Michael Nichols

The Laikipia district of Kenya’s midlands boasts a high-elevation patchwork of private ranches and sanctuaries, community conservation areas, wheat fields, fences, mountain slopes, stream valleys, roads, and shambas (small family farms).

Mara River

Photograph by John Warburton-Lee/Photo Library

Visitors enjoy breakfast near the Mara River in Masai Mara National Reserve. This small but critical haven provides migrating animals plentiful forage and water during the dry season.

Kenyatta Avenue, Nairobi

Photograph by Ken Welsh/Photo Library

Founded in 1899, Nairobi was originally the site of a Maasai water hole used as a camp by workers building the Mombasa-Uganda railroad. Nairobi is the Maasai word for "cool water."

Maasai People

Photograph by Wietske van de Zande, My Shot

The Maasai people of East Africa have always gone their own way. For them, each 12-month span contains two years—a year of plenty, olaari, that coincides with the rainy season, followed by a year of hunger, olameyu, that begins when the rains end.

Leopard

Photograph by Brian Helmuth, My Shot

Awakened from a nap, a leopard climbs down a tree in Masai Mara National Reserve. As recently as 2006, impoverished hunters, part of an exploding human population, were poaching up to 200,000 wild animals a year in the Serengeti, most of them wildebeests. A crackdown on poaching has allowed some decimated species to rebound.

Wildebeests

Photograph by Murray Macdonald, My Shot

Wildebeests surge into a river in Kenya. Healthy populations of predators in the Serengeti-Mara region rely on this keystone species, thought to number around 1.2 million. These members of the antelope family bring life to the African plains, renewing the grasslands with their wide-ranging grazing and droppings.

Rhinoceros

Photograph by Michael Nichols

A ranger pats a baby rhinoceros in the Samburu National Reserve, part of the combined Samburu-Laikipia ecosystem, which covers 11,000 square miles (30,000 square kilometers).

Masai Mara Sunset

Photograph by Linda Wilson, My Shot

In Masai Mara National Reserve two topi pause before a sinking sun. The antelopes are part of the rich tapestry of wildlife that colors Kenya.