Maralal travel guide

High up in the hills, Maralal looks down onto the Lerochi Plateau, 240 km from Meru and 160 km from Nyahururu. Long before the British administrators moved in, this was a spiritual site for the Samburu. The town with two wide tree-lined dusty streets and ramshackle wooden shops has a ‘Wild-West’ atmosphere. Only a few visitors come to Maralal on their way to Turkana or for camel trekking at Yare Safari Club and Camp. Many rural Turkana and Samburu people who have lost their livestock through drought have moved into the town, and the poverty (and begging) can be rather disturbing. There is also the small Maralal Game Sanctuary that can be accessed from the Maralal Safari Lodge. It covers the cedar-clad hillside above the town and in the thorn scrub lower down there are a few impala, eland, buffalo, baboon, warthog and zebra, and seasonally elephant pass through. Much of this wildlife can be seen from the comfortable terrace of the lodge and the only permanent water in the sanctuary is a small waterhole just a few metres away. There used to be many Grevy’s zebra in the hills on the route from Isiolo but unfortunately most of these have been poached out in the last decade or so. Maralal was until his death in 2003 home to Wilfred Thesiger, explorer and travel writer, who spent a number of years here in his later life looking after orphaned children.

The town itself has a few basic amenities, and if you are heading north Maralal is the last town with a bank. Both the Kenya Commercial Bank and the post office are near the market and bus station, and there are also several petrol stations in town. Traditionally garbed Samburu are still very much in evidence here, brightening up the surroundings with their skins, blankets, beads and hair styles. You can buy Samburu handicrafts, like the colourful necklaces made of thousands of beads, as well as sandals made of tyres at the lively market.