Nairobi Day Trip: National Park, Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage and Giraffe Centre

Your Afrikan Accent Adventures guide arrives at your hotel at 6:00am. The drive to the Main Gate on Langata Road takes 15 to 25 minutes depending on your hotel location. We are through the gate and into the park before 6:30am.

The first hour of an early morning drive in Nairobi National Park is the most productive. Lions hold their territories across the open Athi basin in the southern and central sections of the park. Leopards are most visible in the riverine forest along the Athi and Mbagathi rivers before the heat builds. The black rhino population, one of the highest-density urban rhino populations in the world, is most active before 8:00am. Our guides know where the resident animals move and they cross-reference sightings via radio throughout the drive.

Beyond the Big Five, Nairobi National Park holds over 400 recorded bird species. The wetland areas near Hippo Pools in the south support yellow-billed storks, saddle-billed storks, African fish eagles and migrant species between November and April. The open grasslands hold secretary birds, ostriches and large raptors. Birdwatchers who dismiss a city park are consistently wrong about this one.

The Nairobi skyline appears behind the wildlife throughout the drive. The juxtaposition is real and it does not get old. There is a specific photograph that guests return with every time: a giraffe against the glass towers of Upper Hill. We have seen it taken by guests who said they weren’t interested in photography.

Nairobi National Park is the only place in the world where you can watch a black rhino moving through open grassland with a capital city skyline rising directly behind it. That image is not a composite. It is what the park looks like every morning.

The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust was founded by Daphne Sheldrick in 1977 following the death of her husband David Sheldrick, the founding warden of Tsavo East National Park. The elephant orphan rescue programme that she developed over the following decades became the most successful elephant rehabilitation programme in the world. Since 1987 the Trust has hand-raised and successfully reintegrated over 270 orphaned elephants back into the wild, primarily into Tsavo East and Tsavo West national parks.

The public visiting hour runs daily from 11:00am to 12:00 noon at the orphanage inside Nairobi National Park near Mbagathi Gate. During this hour the current resident orphans are brought into the open mud bath enclosure by their keepers and fed on milk formula from oversized bottles. Keepers explain the background of each calf: how it was found, the circumstances of its orphaning and its current stage of rehabilitation. Visitors stand at a low rope perimeter as the calves feed and play.

The youngest calves, those under one year old, are rarely more than two metres from visitors during feeding. This is not a performance. The calves interact with their keepers in ways that reflect genuine attachment, the product of the round-the-clock care that each orphan receives. Every keeper sleeps in the stable with their assigned calf. The bond is biological in its intensity.

The adoption programme allows visitors to sponsor a named orphan for an annual contribution that goes directly to the Trust’s operational costs. Adoptive parents receive updates on their elephant’s progress and, ultimately, news of its reintegration. If you are going to adopt a wild animal anywhere in the world, this is the program with the most credible track record.

The African Fund for Endangered Wildlife Giraffe Centre on Koitobos Road in Langata was established in 1979 by Jock and Betty Leslie-Melville, an American couple who recognised that the Rothschild giraffe, one of the most endangered giraffe subspecies in the world, had been reduced to a small and isolated population in western Kenya. The breeding program they established has since reintroduced Rothschild giraffes to parks and reserves across Kenya and Uganda.

The centre operates a raised wooden platform at head height for the animals. Guests hand-feed the giraffes using pelleted feed provided at the entrance. The giraffes are semi-habituated and approach the platform without hesitation. The feeding interaction is close range, which makes the scale of the animals more apparent than any game drive encounter does. A Rothschild giraffe stands up to 5.9 metres tall. At platform level you are looking directly into the face.

The “giraffe kiss” that the centre is famous for involves holding a food pellet on your lips and allowing the giraffe to take it with its tongue. The tongue is approximately 45 centimetres long and dark in colour, an adaptation against UV damage during feeding. Whether guests choose to attempt this is entirely optional and the staff do not push it. Most people attempt it once. Many attempt it twice.

The centre also operates a small museum covering Rothschild giraffe biology, conservation history and the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife breeding program.

After the Giraffe Centre your guide transfers you directly to your Nairobi hotel, a nominated address in the city, or to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for afternoon or evening departures. The airport is 10 kilometres from the Giraffe Centre and 14 kilometres from Nairobi National Park Main Gate. Journey time to the airport varies between 20 and 45 minutes depending on Nairobi traffic. We advise all guests to confirm their drop-off destination at the start of the day so the guide can factor in real-time traffic conditions.