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Books 2: Guides to Kenya
There are many guides to Kenya. After looking around, we decided that the best one was the Insight Guide to Kenya. This has a lot of information about the history of Kenya, about the people and their variety, and about the wildlife. It is wonderfully illustrated, though this makes it rather heavy (perhaps 50% of the space is taken up by photographs on fine but heavyweight paper).
The Insight Guide is the guide which we used. It's the best one for most people, especially those taking Safari tours. It has information on the country, the safari parks and the main wildlife.
The Rough Guide is enormous at over 600 pages. Partly this is because of the wide spacing. It contains a lot of information for the independent traveller.
The Lonely Planet guide is comprehensive. It contains information for independent travel as well as general information.
Both the Rough Guide and the Lonely Planet offer information for the independent traveller, including car hire and routes, as well as campsites and provincial hotels. However, we strongly recommend that for your first trip at least you join a tour. You can book a tour for just you and your friends or family through most agents - you don't have to travel with strangers if you don't want to. If you insist on driving the car yourself, we strongly suggest that you book through an agent where the intinerary and stops are selected for you. The main reason is safety, which has not necessarily improved in recent years. We read advice that armed guards are a good idea when travelling directly beteen Amboseli and Tsavo, which are both not far from Nairobi. Also road quality will come as a bad surprise, and route markings are often missing. Safety First.
