LOISABA
The Laikipia Plateau. Home of the black leopard.
There are places that call me back time and time again—places that strip away the noise, leaving only peace and transformation.
By the time I arrived at Loisaba, Giza was famous. The female melanistic leopard — first documented here in 2018, the first verified sighting in Kenya in nearly a century — had become a destination. Photographers arrived. Vehicles raced each other through the thickets to reach her. I watched it happen and understood that what I was witnessing was not a wildlife encounter. It was a spectacle.
That is not why I came to Loisaba.
I came for the animals in the cactus — to move slowly through a landscape that had more in it than anyone racing toward a famous cat was going to find.
What I found was Loshami. A large male melanistic leopard, entirely unbothered by the absence of an audience. At sunset, he walked across the road directly in front of my vehicle. Just me, my guide, and Loshami in the last light. No other photographers. No other vehicles. He crossed without pausing, disappeared into the scrub, and was gone.
That is the difference between a spectacle and a sighting. One you chase. The other finds you when you stop.
Loisaba is leopard country. The conservancy’s rocky outcrops, dry riverbeds, and mixed acacia-commiphora scrub provide the kind of terrain leopards choose: varied, layered, offering cover and height in equal measure.
The melanistic individual documented here in 2018 — the most widely reported wildlife story of that year — brought international attention to a conservancy that had been quietly significant for much longer.
Whether or not you encounter them, leopards are present here. They move through the same hills they have always occupied.
They are simply more visible to the patient observer.
Other Animals & Species Facts
Loisaba is one of the few places in Kenya where you have a genuine chance of encountering a striped hyena — a nocturnal, solitary animal far rarer and more elusive than its spotted relative. Where the spotted hyena announces itself, the striped hyena withdraws. It occupies the dark margins of the landscape and asks nothing of the day.
I saw one just before dusk, moving low through the scrub below the escarpment. I had been photographing in that direction for another reason entirely. The striped hyena did not acknowledge us. It simply continued — bone-cracker, night-walker, a species that has existed on these plains for millennia and has no interest in being noticed.
Lion, elephant, Grevy’s zebra, reticulated giraffe, and Beisa oryx also move through the conservancy. The birdlife across the plateau is exceptional, with raptors using the thermals above the escarpment edge throughout the day.
LOISABA LANDSCAPE
Loisaba sits on the western edge of the Laikipia Plateau at over 5,000 feet elevation. On clear days, the view from the escarpment edge takes in the Rift Valley to the west, Mount Kenya to the east, and a sky that seems to exist at a different altitude from anywhere else.
The plateau itself is semi-arid: rocky, sparse, thorn-studded, with seasonal rivers cutting through ancient rock. The light here — at dawn and dusk — is among the most extraordinary I have encountered in East Africa. Long, clean, and gold in a way that feels almost architectural.
There is a threat written into this landscape that is easy to miss if you don’t know what you are looking at. Opuntia — prickly pear cactus — is an invasive species that has spread across the Laikipia Plateau over decades, forming dense impenetrable thickets that block the movement routes wildlife has used for generations.
Loisaba’s land management programme includes active Opuntia removal — slow, labour-intensive work that requires teams on the ground clearing thickets and restoring the open corridors that elephants, predators, and grazing species depend on.
Deanna with K9 anti-poaching dogs — Scully and Mulder.
Conservation at Loisaba does not end when the day drive does. After dark, when the bush is at its most active and its most vulnerable, the K9 unit goes to work.
Anti-poaching dogs are among the most effective tools a conservancy can deploy. Their nose finds what no ranger on foot can — a human scent on a trail that has otherwise been made to look untouched, ivory or bushmeat concealed in a vehicle, a snare set just off the patrol path. The dogs do not miss.
The ranger took me into the bush and told me to hide — as far off as I could go, through scrub and dry grass. Then he sent the dog.
I watched it work from where I was crouched, still, trying not to breathe too loudly. The dog moved in widening arcs, nose down, unhurried. It wasn’t following a path. It was reading the ground — my footprint, somewhere in the dust, placed there without my noticing. It found me in minutes. There was no drama. No announcement. It simply arrived, and looked at me, and that was that.
I understood then why they call them bloodhounds. Not because of anything violent in the name — but because of the absolute certainty. The scent is a fact to them. They follow it the way water follows a slope. The poacher has no equivalent answer to that.
K9 anti-poaching facts
Anti-poaching K9 units can detect human scent trails up to 72 hours old and track across terrain that defeats visual tracking entirely — making them among the most effective deterrents against opportunistic poaching in any conservancy.
A trained anti-poaching dog takes 12 to 18 months to prepare for field deployment. Each dog specialises — some track human scent, others detect ivory, bushmeat, or weapons. The combination of both roles in a single unit significantly increases patrol effectiveness.
Loisaba doesn’t reveal itself quickly. It asks you to stay still long enough to understand what you’re looking at.
field notes
TRAVEL WITH INTENTION
Loisaba pairs naturally with Samburu — both northern Kenya destinations with distinct landscapes and overlapping species. The wider Laikipia circuit — Loisaba, Lewa-Borana, Ol Pejeta — gives you the full arc of the northern conservancy story.
I design this journey with that coherence in mind, placing you in each location long enough to understand what makes it different from the one before.
LODO SPRINGS
ELEWANA COLLECTION
Lodo Springs sits within the Loisaba Conservancy.
Small, considered, and entirely unhurried. The design is open and unobtrusive, built to place you inside the landscape rather than apart from it. The escarpment light comes into every room.
The food here is the best plant-based cooking I have encountered anywhere in my travels. Not a compromise, not a reduced menu — a genuinely curated and creative kitchen that happens to work entirely without meat. Every meal felt considered: specific ingredients, specific combinations, and a kitchen that clearly takes the same care with a plate as the conservancy takes with its land.
Solar energy, responsible water use, and a management ethos built around minimal impact. Lodo Springs is the kind of lodge that earns its place in its landscape — because it clearly understands what that landscape is worth.
STAR BEDS
Sleep beneath eternity
I arrived before the land turned gold, the air cool and still. Night sank slowly over Loisaba, vast and unbroken. With no cities near, the dark became luminous in its own way.
The river murmured below, nightjars called, elephants shifted, and somewhere beyond, a kudu wrestled in the brush, antlers clashing in the dark.
I climbed to my star bed, lantern swaying. The warriors faded into shadow, silent and watching. Curled in warmth, a hot water bottle beneath the sheets, I lay open to the land.
The sky unfurled — immense and brilliant. Stars scattered like silver ash. For a moment, I floated among them.
At dawn, hippos called from the river, deep-throated and ancient. Birds lifted the light with song. The day arrived slowly, on its own terms.
“Loisaba takes its name from the Maasai word for the Pleiades — the star cluster known as the Seven Sisters. On a clear night from the star bed platform, the Seven Sisters are directly overhead. You are sleeping beneath the sky that named this place. That is not incidental. It is the whole point.”
Deanna
