Nairobi
A savanna with lions and rhinos seven kilometres from the centre of a capital — and a city that for most people is just the night before the safari
- When to go
- October 20° · 11 rainy days
- Per day
- 50–120 €per person · checked 6 Sep 2026
- How many days
- 2days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 4 km Wilson · 13 km Jomo Kenyatta
- Right now
Nairobi is a stopover worth stretching to two days: a national park with lions and rhinos starts at the edge of the city, an elephant orphanage sits inside it, and the National Museum holds Turkana Boy. Land in the evening and leave for the Mara next morning, and you miss a safari you can reach by taxi.
Entry to Nairobi National Park is €69 per foreigner for 24 hours, plus the eCitizen fee, paid in advance on eCitizen by card or M-Pesa — the gates take no cash. The Sheldrick orphanage asks for a park ticket too, because it sits inside the park: come only for the hour of feeding and you pay park entry for that hour. So the drive through the park goes in the morning, and you reach the orphanage by eleven.
The city sprawls: Jomo Kenyatta airport is 18 kilometres south-east of the centre, Langata and Karen, with the orphanage, the giraffes and Karen Blixen's house, lie to the south-west, and Westlands and Kilimani west of the centre. Uber and Bolt work across the city. The UK Foreign Office lists the Central Business District among the higher-crime parts of town and advises against walking alone in isolated places even by day — which is why you sleep in Westlands, Kilimani or Karen rather than downtown.
Safaris leave from here in three directions: the Masai Mara to the west is about six hours by road to the eastern gates, or 45 to 60 minutes by air from Wilson airport; Amboseli to the south is four to five hours by road or about 45 minutes by air; Lake Nakuru lies 164 kilometres north. After an overnight flight you spend the first night here, and a day before or after the safari gives you the park, the orphanage and the museum without a separate trip.
Guides for Nairobi
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
Nairobi in 2 days
→The national park at six in the morning and Langata in the afternoon on day one, the museum and the centre on day two…
What to see in Nairobi
Nairobi National Park
A 117-square-kilometre savanna with lions, giraffes, zebras and buffalo, and skyscrapers behind. The park is one of Kenya's most successful black rhino sanctuaries; it is fenced on three sides, and the open south lets herds come in from the Kitengela plains.
The Sheldrick orphanage
Orphaned elephant calves bottle-fed in front of visitors; the public visit runs every day from 11 to 12. You enter through Mbagathi gate, book your place by email, and pay the €17 donation in cash on arrival.
- T
The National Museum
On Museum Hill, with a human-origins gallery holding a cast of Turkana Boy, a skeleton about one and a half million years old — the museum keeps the original in its vault. The Snake Park and a botanical garden sit next to the building.
The Giraffe Centre
Rothschild's giraffes fed from a raised platform in Langata. The centre opened in 1983 alongside a breeding programme that returned this subspecies to Kenya's parks, and it is in the same area as the orphanage.
Karen Blixen's house
A house from 1912 at the foot of the Ngong Hills, where Karen Blixen ran a coffee plantation until she left for Denmark in 1931 — the farm of Out of Africa. It has been a museum since 1986; the film was shot at her earlier farm, Mbagathi, not here.
Nyama choma at Carnivore
Meat roasted over charcoal at a Langata restaurant open since 1980: it is cooked on Maasai swords and carried to the table. Game has been off the menu since the 2004 ban, so the exotic choice is farmed ostrich and crocodile.
Two things you probably did not know
Nairobi is the only capital in the world with a national park inside the city limits. Lions and rhinos live seven kilometres from the business district, and photographs show skyscrapers behind the giraffes.
The city began in 1899 as a depot on the railway being built from Mombasa to Uganda. The name comes from a Maasai phrase for cool water, after the stream that ran there.
Ready for Nairobi?
Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Nairobi — day trips or weekends.
Kenya
→A safari charged by the day, not by the trip — a reserve whose gate fee doubles in July, while a whole trip costs only half as much more
Tanzania
→The Serengeti, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar in one country — and three different bills: the safari by the day, the mountain by the night, the island by an insurance paid at the door
South Africa
→A country of long distances and reversed seasons, driven on the left throughout
Namibia
→A country you drive rather than visit: about four people per square kilometre, gravel roads without end, and a safari done in your own car as in Kruger — only without the fence
All 277 places we write about sit on one page — narrow them down by continent, country, price or what you are travelling for.
Within reach from here: Masai Mara, Amboseli and Arusha
See how much of that actually suits you — or pin Nairobi if you have been.
Front row for the next trip
Leave your email and we'll let you know when a new destination or story goes up.