Lake Naivasha is one of the most peaceful and beautiful spots in Kenya's Rift Valley. It is a large freshwater lake surrounded by acacias, papyrus and flower farms. Hippos snort among the reeds, while fish eagles, kingfishers and hundreds of other bird species fly overhead. Just an hour and a half from Nairobi, it is the capital's favourite escape for nature and rest, and a classic stop on the route to the Masai Mara.
The best thing about Naivasha is its range of relaxed, easy-going experiences. You can take a sunset boat trip among hippos and eagles. You can walk among zebras, giraffes and antelopes on nearby Crescent Island, where there are no predators — something very rare in Kenya. You can spend a day cycling through the spectacular gorges of Hell's Gate National Park, which inspired scenery in 'The Lion King'. Or you can visit Elsamere, the home of Joy Adamson, author of 'Born Free'.
This practical guide to Lake Naivasha covers boat trips and the hippos, and how to visit Crescent Island and Hell's Gate. It also covers prices, getting there from Nairobi, and how to combine the lake with Nakuru and the Mara. Green, calm and full of life, Naivasha is the relaxed counterpoint to the big safaris: a lake for taking things slowly and enjoying nature at water level.
The name Naivasha comes from the Maasai word 'Nai'posha', meaning 'rough water', after the sudden storms that sometimes hit the lake. Oddly, it is a freshwater lake in a chain of salt lakes, which scientists explain by underground outflows. In colonial times its shores were a retreat for the eccentric and scandalous British aristocrats of the 'Happy Valley' set. During the Second World War the lake was a seaplane base. Today it is a global hub of flower farming and a nature destination. Our history page tells this story, from Maasai myth to the 'Happy Valley' and the flowers.
Read the full history ↓Africa's great geological scar splits Kenya in two, stringing together alkaline lakes full of flamingos and freshwater lakes teeming with hippos and birds.
Read the history of The Great Rift Valley and its lakes →Some places make no sense on your own; with someone explaining them, they change completely. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have over 10 activities in Nairobi. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Three are below so you get the idea: tap any of them and they all open.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The lake's name already holds part of its story. The Maasai, who for centuries brought their cattle to drink along these shores, called it 'Nai'posha', usually translated as 'rough waters' or 'turbulent waters'. The name comes from the sudden storms and winds that sometimes sweep across the lake without warning and whip up dangerous waves. The first British explorers and settlers bent that Maasai word into today's 'Naivasha'.
Lake Naivasha is a geological oddity. It sits at the highest point of the floor of Kenya's Great Rift Valley, at almost 1,900 metres. Against all apparent logic, it is a freshwater lake in the middle of a chain of salty, alkaline lakes such as Nakuru, Elementaita and Magadi. Scientists explain this by underground outflows: the lake has no visible surface outlet, but its water seeps away through the ground, so salts don't build up and the water stays fresh. That fresh water is why the lake is full of hippos, fish, papyrus and exceptional birdlife.
For thousands of years Naivasha was a source of water and life in the Rift, used by herding peoples such as the Maasai and by plentiful wildlife. Its level has risen and fallen dramatically over the centuries with cycles of rain and drought. At times it almost dried up, and at others it burst its banks. That rise and fall continues today and is part of what makes this a living, ever-changing lake.
In the late 19th century, at the height of European exploration in East Africa, Lake Naivasha began to appear in travellers' accounts. The Scottish explorer Joseph Thomson reached it in 1883 on his expedition through Maasai territory, and in the decades that followed it became a landmark on the route inland. In the early 20th century the British-built Uganda Railway arrived. It climbed from Mombasa through the Rift Valley towards Lake Victoria, and it opened the region to the colonial world for good.
The fertile land around the lake, with its mild climate and rich soils, drew the first European settlers, who set up cattle ranches and farms. Naivasha fell within the 'White Highlands', the uplands reserved for white farmers. African communities, above all the Maasai and Kikuyu, lost out and were pushed off their grazing land. A community of settlers grew up around the lake, combining farm work with a lifestyle that was often eccentric and privileged.
The lake also became a strategic point for travel and communications. In the 1930s and during the Second World War, its calm waters served as a base for the flying boats on Britain's imperial air routes. Planes linking Britain with South Africa touched down on Naivasha during their long journey across Africa. The historic Lake Naivasha Country Club was born in the flying-boat era and still keeps its colonial atmosphere.
In the early decades of the 20th century, the area around Lake Naivasha and the nearby Wanjohi highlands, towards the Aberdare mountains, became notorious for a circle of British aristocrats and settlers known as the 'Happy Valley set'. They were aristocrats and wealthy European landowners who, far from the Victorian morals of home, lived a life of luxury and idleness, with plenty of alcohol, drugs and love affairs. A famous quip summed up their reputation: 'Are you married, or do you live in Kenya?'.
That decadent, frivolous world rested on the labour of Africans working the farms. It became famous worldwide in 1941 because of a sensational crime: the murder of Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, one of the set's leading figures, who was found shot dead in a car near Nairobi. With its adultery, jealousy and a trial that failed to convict the main suspect, the case became an international scandal and has inspired books and films such as 'White Mischief' (1987).
Today 'Happy Valley' is a curious and uncomfortable part of Naivasha's history. It shows colonialism at its most extreme: a European elite living in a private paradise built on African land that had been taken from its owners and on African labour. After the Second World War, as the independence movement grew, that world faded, and it disappeared completely when Kenya became independent in 1963.
Lake Naivasha also has a special place in the history of wildlife conservation, thanks to one woman: Joy Adamson. An Austrian-born naturalist, painter and writer, Adamson became world-famous in 1960 with her book 'Born Free'. It told the true story of Elsa, an orphaned lioness that she and her husband George, a game warden, raised and then successfully returned to the wild instead of sending her to a zoo. The book and the 1966 film moved millions of people and changed the way the world saw Africa's wild animals.
Joy Adamson spent her last years at Elsamere, her home on the shore of Lake Naivasha, where she painted, wrote and worked for conservation. Her house is now a conservation centre and museum that keeps her life and work alive, and it serves its well-known 'afternoon tea' among the colobus monkeys in the garden. The story of Elsa and the Adamsons ended tragically: Joy was murdered in 1980 and George in 1989, both violently and in circumstances linked to their projects. It is inseparable from the lake.
Their pioneering message, that wild animals deserve to live free and must be protected in their own habitat, was one of the seeds of the modern conservation movement in Kenya and around the world. The country that had been a land of safari hunters began to see itself as the guardian of a unique natural heritage. That idea now underpins its whole tourism industry and many of its policies.
In recent decades Lake Naivasha has been transformed by an unexpected industry: flower farming. Its shores filled up with huge greenhouses growing cut flowers for export, mostly roses. Today the Naivasha area is one of the world's largest flower-growing centres. Its roses are cut before dawn, kept cold and flown out of Nairobi, reaching the auctions in the Netherlands and florists all over Europe by the next morning. The industry employs tens of thousands of people and is a pillar of Kenya's exports.
But this boom has an environmental and social cost that sparks debate. Heavy water use to irrigate the flowers, fertiliser and pesticide runoff, and the rapid population growth around the farms, with settlements springing up without planning, have put the lake's fragile ecosystem under enormous pressure. On top of that, extreme swings in the water level have shown how vulnerable this living, ever-changing lake is. A sharp rise over the past decade flooded shorelines, lodges and farms.
Today's Naivasha is a small-scale picture of the tensions in modern Kenya: economic development against conservation, flowers that provide jobs against a lake that needs protecting, the memory of colonial 'Happy Valley' against Joy Adamson's conservation legacy. Even so, it is still a haven of hippos, birds and peaceful landscapes. You can take a boat out at sunset, walk among giraffes and cycle through the gorges of Hell's Gate. Century after century, the Maasai's 'rough waters' keep bringing life to the heart of the Rift Valley.
