The target for most travellers to the Northern Frontier District of Kenya is Lake Turkana. Lake Turkana stretches south for 250km from the Ethiopian border, down through Kenya’s arid lands, bisecting the rocky deserts. It is hemmed in by sandy wastes and black and brown volcanic ranges. The water is alternately glassy blue or jade green. Lake Turkana is the biggest permanent desert lake in the world with a shoreline longer than the whole of Kenya’s sea coast. Today it has been reduced to a sliver of its former self. An alkaline lake, it has no outlet and 3 metres of water-depth evaporates from its surface each year. A mammoth inland sea, it is fed by the headwaters of the Nile and is famous for the presence of enormous Nile perch. 

Historical aspects

The lake was discovered from the rest of the world only in 1888 by the Austrians Teleki and von Hohnel, who named it Rudolf after their archduke and patron. Later it became eulogized as the ‘Jade Sea’ in John Hillaby’s book about his camel trek. The name Turkana only came into being during the wholesale Kenyanization of place names in the 1970s. By then it had also been dubbed the ‘Cradle of Mankind’, due to the existence of Koobi Fora a major paleontological site, which is now incorporated into the Sibiloi National Park.