The Elephant Watch Safari
Elephants are special because they're sentient creatures of high intelligence that experience a vast range of emotions, much like us. They live in close, loving family units, recognising each other as individuals and also specifically by name. Relying on one another entirely for wisdom born of experience, comfort and safety, in times of duress they've been seen to act with compassion and also to grieve their dead.
Elephants are phenomenal communicators that can cover eight octaves in a single scream or boom out messages in infrasound, a frequency that is far below human hearing, that is picked up by other elephants in the distance, as far away as ten kilometres.
Our passion at Elephant Watch is to understand all we can about their world and to share it with you. Thanks to our partners at Save The Elephants, who trained our team, we can trace back the family history of each calf born today about four generations. Our guides know most of the elephants by name, so we'll introduce you to many of our favourite individuals in this fascinating society of 1000+ elephants whom we've known since 1997.
Elephant friendships are profound and long-lasting. As we present families like the Winds, the Storms, the Spice Girls or the Rivers to you, and introduce their matriarchs, Mistral, Monsoon, Cinnamon or Euphrates, we'll explain how old ties between cousins and daughters, or late aunts and great grandmothers, continue to influence evolving relationships in the younger generations today, as well as alliances or emnity between unrelated families.
The intimacy of our encounters with Samburu's elephants are remarkable. Born of consistent gentle interactions spanning many years, the elephants have come to know and trust us, so they tend to welcome our vehicles right into the heart of their herds as their lives unfold un-hurried (in elephant-time) in a completely relaxed and natural manner.
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Our understanding of these elephants is enhanced further by the unique perspectives and insights offered by the Samburu nomads that are your hosts, your guides, and will soon also become your friends. Our entire team at Elephant Watch hails from the nomadic community whose charm and irreverent sense of humour is renown. Not only have the nomads lived their entire lives among elephants, but their knowledge of the landscape, the seasons, the flora and the fauna is unsurpassed.
What we love most about their wildlife-tolerant culture is that it's blazing a trail for peaceful co-existence between people and elephants in East Africa and beyond. Many young nature enthusiasts from this community are now emerging as the new faces of conservation in Africa, and their people are increasingly recognised as crucial stewards of the land.​
