The Maasai and Samburu of Laikipia, Kenya consider standing on the height of Ol Lentille Mountain brings you nearer to God. In occasions of drought, the ladies within the surrounding communities make the trek to the highest to sing, elevating their prayers for rain into the sky. I’ve been led up right here within the day’s final honeyed gentle by my Maasai information, Solomon Saidimu. Whereas I don’t sing, there’s a feeling of holiness within the monumental rock beneath my ft and the rolling inexperienced hills working towards the horizon.

At Ol Lentille, a community-owned lodge and 40,000-acre nature conservancy, each stroll and sport drive is threaded with cultural tales and conventional data that imbue the panorama with a way of divinity. Right here, choices of valuable milk are poured over the roots of sacred fig bushes and into the serpentine Tura River. The Indigenous reverence for nature is one which any traveler planning a visit to Kenya ought to take heed of.

Residence to the Nice Migration and the well-known “Massive 5” animals, Kenya tops the want listing for a lot of safari fans—a lot in order that it’s turning into an issue. In late 2022, a video surfaced on Twitter displaying a swarm of autos crowding cheetahs to witness a high-octane chase and kill, a part of a rising subject the place overzealous safari-goers within the Maasai Mara Nationwide Reserve—the nation’s hottest vacation spot—put animals in danger to get the proper shot.

A rising physique of proof exhibits that overtourism within the Maasai Mara threatens wildlife (a 2018 research outlined how overtourism reduces the variety of cheetahs that survive into maturity, for instance, whereas wildebeest numbers are dwindling attributable to overdevelopment). Regardless that tourism is way extra managed within the non-public conservancies surrounding the reserve, the Mara’s unparalleled reputation nonetheless means giant swaths of the nation aren’t benefiting totally from ecotourism—a lifeline for many individuals in Kenya—and different protected wilderness areas which are attempting to develop might not be receiving the eye they deserve. I knew I needed to find one other aspect of Kenya after I traveled there.