Africa is sprawling with a multitude of extraordinary safaris, but for your first trip to the expansive continent, there’s no place better to go to than Kenya, the original safari destination. If that alone is not enough to get you on a plane, SUV or ship, here is a list to convince you otherwise:

1. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Kenya is home to 25,000 different species of animals, with all the iconic safari game among them and much more. The Big Five can be spotted all in one morning in the Maasai Mara.
2. The largest geothermal field in the world is located at Kenya’s Hell’s Gate National Park. You can bike or walk through the volcanic landscape composed of rock towers, plumes of steam, basalt cliffs and steaming vents.
3. The Great Rift Lakes are unlike anything you have ever seen before. Lake Bogoria, the least visited but arguably the most unique of the lakes in the Great Rift Valley, is definitely one every traveller should experience in their lifetime. Travel Africa describes it as “a thin ribbon of pewter-blue water, often candy-frosted with flamingos, while around its shores, 200 boiling geysers spew jets of water high into the air that reeks of sulphur… a vision from an insanely beautiful hell.”
4. Kenya is one of 13 countries in the world that straddle the equator. Mount Kenya, part of the Mount Kenya National Park which became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997, is situated in the middle of the country and almost exactly on top of the equator.
5. The heart of the great wildebeest migration in Africa is Kenya. AfricanMecca Safaris say that if you visit between the months of July and October, you will get to experience something so chaotic and magnificent as the herd emerges from the distance and thunders across the plains.

Booking Your Ticket to Kenya

Kenya operates a handful of airports, mainly in the Central and Western regions. If you are flying to Nairobi, most international flights will connect to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), the biggest aviation hub in Kenya and the busiest in Africa.

Although some people try to cut down on airfare costs by arriving at one of the regional airports, Parking4Less notes, in a blog post titled ‘Beware of Cheap Flights Extra Costs’, that one of the most common hidden costs of travel is, in fact, the distance of the airport to major cities.

A ticket to a smaller airport might be cheaper than one to JKIA, but you need to factor in the distance and cost of transportation to see if it is actually the smarter choice over flying direct. Do you now see why Kenya still remains the safari destination of choice?

This is a sponsored post