JADE SEA KENYA

Lake Turkana is also known as Jade Sea and the surroundings area as the ‘Cradle of Mankind’.  With its blue – green waters, bleak stony shores, and crocodile inhabited volcanic isles. Lake Turkana is  in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, with its far northern end crossing into Ethiopia. The renowned paleontologist Richard Leakey was led to conclude it was here that man first trod openly on earth.  The million year old skull of Homo Erectus found at Koobi Fora on the lakes eastern coast vindicated Leakey’s famous guess.

The lake was named Lake Rudolf (in honor of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria) by Count Sámuel Teleki de Szék and his second-in-command Lieutenant Ludwig Ritter Von Höhnel, a Hungarian and an Austrian , in 1888. They were its first European discoverers, “finding” it on safari across East Africa on March 6, 1888. It is the largest permanent desert lake in the world also the largest alkaline lake in the world.

The lake’s parched shores are now home to the Turkana, a tribe of fiercely independent cattle-herding, cattle stealing warriors who have vehemently defied all authorities for the last hundred years.  A tad more neighborly are the El molo, said to be numerically the world’s smallest tribe, they once lived by hunting and the now protected hippo and Nile crocodile.  East of Lake Turkana is the Chalbi desert. Geographically cracked and unrelentingly flat it throws up mirages where its long flat horizons shimmer hotly with the sky.  The camel caravans and herds of goats that ply this wasteland are driven by the Boran and Gabbra, moving from one oasis to the next.

A drive from one of the oasis will take you to the outskirts of a lush rain forest.  This is Marsabit.  Marsabit itself is a national park. It has a market town, lots of wildlife and high volcanic lakes.  Such a lake paradise.  It is certainly a paradise for game.  Elephants and buffaloes emerge from the forest to take their evening drink.