Saiwa Swamp National Park

Muhtasari

Saiwa Swamp is about three square kilometres of papyrus swamp and riverine forest near Kitale in western Kenya — Kenya’s smallest national park, gazetted in 1974 for a single species. The sitatunga is a semi-aquatic antelope whose long splayed hooves let it walk on floating vegetation, and this is the easiest place in East Africa to watch one doing it: duckboards cross the swamp to four observation towers, and at dawn the animals feed in the open channels below them. The park’s other draw is De Brazza’s monkey, a grey-bearded guenon rare in Kenya and shy almost everywhere, which lives in the fringing forest here along with black-and-white colobus and the Sykes’s monkey. The bird list is long for the size, with Ross’s turaco, grey crowned crane and the swamp specialities. There are no vehicles inside: the whole park is on foot.