Uganda Safaris

Lake Magadi Safaris

3 Days Ologasaile-Magadi


Day 1: Nairobi-Magadi

08.00 a.m: Depart Nairobi and drive west to the Ngong hills (which in Maasai means knuckles.). The vehicle will drive to meet you at the end of the Ngong hills hotel and then proceed to the Ologasaile Prehistoric site. Picnic , then lunch, then continue down the sloppy hills in Magadi in time for dinner and overnight at the camp.

Day 2: Magadi

After breakfast drive past the 18 hole golf course through to the medical springs(spas)- relax, proceed to the beautiful lake and unsparingly many species of birds including the flamingos!! Dinner and overnight at the camp.

Day 3: Magadi-Nairobi

After breakfast drive slowly back up-hill; stopping for lunch on the way, arriving in Nairobi late afternoon.
*Minimum number of participants required for this tour is three (3).


Lake Magadi

Lake Magadi

Deep in the heart of Southern Kenya’s Maasai land is the unearthly Lake Magadi. This 104 sq km soda lake is completely surrounded by vast natural salt flats. These sweltering hot plains prevent any animals reaching the alkaline lake at its centre. For this reason, thousands of flamingo descend on the lake each year to nest on elevated mud mounds at the lake’s edge safe from any potential predators.

Lake Magadi

Lake Magad

Lake Magadi is the southermost lake in the Kenyan Rift Valley, lying north east of Lake Natron. During the dry season, it is 80% covered by soda and is well known for its wading birds, including flamingos.

It is a saline, alkaline lake, approximately 100 square kilometers in size, that lies in a graben. The lake is an example of a "saline pan". The lake water, which is a dense sodium carbonate brine, precipitates vast quanitites of the mineral called trona (sodium sesquicarbonate). In places, the salt is up to 40 m thick. The lake is recharged mainly by saline hot springs (up to about 83°C), there being little surface runoff in this arid region. Most hot springs lie along the northwestern and southern shorelines of the lake. During the rainy season a thin (<1 m) layer of brine covers much of the saline pan, but this evaporates rapidly leaving a vast expanse of white salt that cracks to produce large polygons. A single species of fish, a cichlid called Alcolapia grahami, inhabits the hot, highly alkaline waters of this lake basin. Lake Magadi was not always so saline. Several thousand years ago (during the late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene) the Magadi basin held a freshwater lake with many fish, whose remains are preserved in the High Magadi Beds, a series of lacustrine and volcaniclastic sediments preserved in various locations around the present shoreline. Evidence also exists for several older Pleistocene precursor lakes that were much larger than present Lake Magadi.

Magadi township lies on the lake's east shore, and is home to the Magadi Soda factory, now owned by Tata India. This factory produces soda ash, which has a range of industrial uses.

These sweltering hot plains prevent any animals reaching the alkaline lake at its centre. For this reason, thousands of flamingo descend on the lake each year to nest on elevated mud mounds at the lake’s edge safe from any potential predators.