Kenya's capital, Nairobi, is a cosmopolitan, lively, interesting and a pleasantly landscaped city, and is a great place to visit when you are travelling through Kenya. Nairobi’s central business district is handily compact and it is therefore a great place to tune into modern urban East African life. Originally this area of Kenya was little more than a swampy watering hole for the Maasai tribes... Nairobi then grew with the advent of the railway and became a substantial town by 1900. Five years later it succeeded Mombasa as the capital of the British protectorate, and today it's the largest city between Cairo and Johannesburg.

Nairobi is also the most convenient points of entry into Kenya by flight. In most cases when you are embarking on a safari in Kenya you will start and end in Nairobi… which is great as you will be able to enjoy the culture and vibrancy of this popular city!  It's worth visiting the National Museum – it offers a good introduction to Kenya, and the cool, peaceful interiors will give relief from the hot, busy streets outside. As you walk quietly around, you'll see displays of fossils, tribal artefacts, and a bird gallery with more than 900 stuffed and mounted specimens.

Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city is unique as it has a wildlife park on its doorstep. It is actually possible to photograph a rhino browsing peacefully among the whistling thorn with high-rise office buildings in the background! As some of the wildlife species are migratory, many will move out into Maasailand through the unfenced southern border, to graze and find water outside the park. Despite this, there remains a resident population, making a visit to Nairobi at any time during the year a rewarding experience.

Of the most popular species, only the elephant is an absentee. But the rest of the big five - the leopard, the lion, the buffalo and the rhino - as well as a multitude of other creatures are well represented in the Nairobi National Park. Large populations of giraffe, wildebeest, eland and Thompson's gazelle dominate the plains with secretary birds and powerful ostrich as attractive counter-points. The Nairobi National Park has been designated a Rhino Sanctuary and more than 50 rhinos have been brought here from various remote parts of the country where poaching was rampant.

So if you want to see rhinos, Nairobi National Park is the place to be... Contact Jenman East Africa to find out more about travelling to Kenya and Nairobi.