More about Tsavo

The Galana River is the lifeblood of Tsavo East National Park, one of the two permanent rivers that serve this arid region. Its source are tributaries that originate in the forested highlands of the Great Rift Valley, and merge near Nairobi to form what is known as the Athi river, so named by the Wakamba tribe that inhabit lands through which it flows on its journey to the Park. It enters the Park and is known by that name until its confluence with the perennial Tsavo river which is fed by the crystal clear waters of Mzima Springs in Tsavo West National Park, (the main water source for the port town of Mombasa). From this point on the river is known as the Galana for the rest of its length through Tsavo East National Park, but it becomes the Sabaki when it leaves the boundary of the Park to flow through the tribal lands of the coastal Giriama people, before pouring into the sea near the Coastal resort of Malindi. Sadly, due to negative farming practices and erosion in the Wakamba country upstream before it enters the Park, the river is subjected to periods of intense flooding during the two rainy seasons of the year, when it becomes a red raging torrent, cutting off access to the Northern Area of Tsavo via the causeway that spans the river near Lugards Falls. Due to this it is responsible for depositing huge loads of topsoil silt into the sea near the Coastal resort of Malindi, which has impacted negatively on the once beautiful Malindi bay and beach as well as having destroyed large stretches of coral reef. On its journey through the Park, however, when not in flood, it is characterised by long slow quiet stretches interspersed with noisy rapids, and supports mid-river islands of bull-rushes and reeds which provide ideal shelter and nesting grounds for Tsavo’s huge biodiversity of water-birds. Its banks are fringed with riparian stands of feathery Tana River poplars, and large trees such as Acacia elatiors, Figs and Tamarinds, and its lower reaches beyond Lugards Falls, by dense thickets of the salt-bush, Sueda. These thickets provide ideal ambush places for the many prides of lions that Tsavo harbours – probably the largest single remaining lion population in the world, since lions elsewhere are becoming endangered. It was here that our orphan “Galana” was found in hiding and it was the denseness of the Salt-bush thickets that saved her from falling prey to the lions once she had been deprived of the protection of her mother and elephant family.

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