Marsabit town, which lies tucked in between the National Reserve to the north and the National Park to the south, is about 560 km from Nairobi. The road is tarmac to Isiolo but thereafter has a rough earth surface for the remaining 310 km. The town and its sanctuaries lie atop a mountain rising sheer from the desert floor to a height of about 1,707 m. Marsabit Mountain is a natural phenomenon, born out of volcanic fire and shaped by mist. The mountain's great mass has created its own ambient climate. Every evening, at about midnight, the hot air rising from the desert floor cools and forms clinging fingers of mist that grasp the mountain, rarely releasing their grip until the late part of the morning.

Although the lower slopes are scorched and dry, above them is a richly forested wonderland of crater lakes and swamps, towering cliffs and giant trees, and a dazzling array of wildlife. Here bird and beast dart between the tall stands of juniper and podocarpus in a scene much as wildlife filmmakers Osa and Martin Johnson recorded when they made their home at Lake Paradise, one of the crater lakes, in the 1920's. Many species of raptors inhabit the shaggy cliffs and the treetops around Lake Paradise and Sokorte Guda, a cliff-lined bowl that forms a natural amphitheatre in which Marsabit's elephants parade to drink in the late afternoon. Large herds of buffalo join this display.

For an estimated 63 years Marsabit was the home of Ahmed, patriarch of the forest, guarded from hunters seeking his mighty tusks, by a presidential decree. A model of Ahmed now stands in the National Museum in Nairobi. Now his scions wander the forest under the watchful eyes of the Reserve's rangers.

Other species found on the mountain include the shy greater kudu and other antelope as well as lion and leopard. Lower down the mountain, below the forest line, groups of Borana people drive their camels to water at the singing wells. Three or four men form a human ladder down these deep shafts and with camel-hide buckets work in swift relay to bring water to the troughs above. The songs they sing whilst undertaking this work have earned the wells their name.

Marsabit is a staging post for the journey to Moyale and onwards to Ethiopia and also the beginning of an adventure that intrepid travelers make when they cross the inhospitable Chalbi desert to reach Lake Turkana. This shimmering and seemingly endless expanse of sand stretches for 300 km to the shore of the lake of which it was once part. Even today, perhaps once in every decade, in one of the torrential downpours that occur during a rare rainy season, it will again come into flood to form a vast but shallow lake.

Special thanks to the Kenya Association of Tour Operators for helping GORP develop Kenya parks information.