Lonely Planet Kenya (Travel Guide)

What's happened to LP books? I buy them for the local recommendations of hotels and restaurants....and now there are none!!! It is good to learn about the areas to narrow down where you would want to visit but now will have to rely on trip advisor etc to find accommodation. Massive shame, it was the main perk of the books to me.

Poorly written Lone=ly Planet guide. Kenya is THE safari capital, and there was little solid safari content. And, the coverage on game parks, was mostly superficial, and offered little detail on topics such as how to find hiking trails, and where to pick up bikes.Where is a list of recommended safari operators? Open and Close times of parks? Park fees schedule? Whether the parks are 6-6pm daily tickets, 24hr tickets, or single-entry tickets. Where is a list of more than one accommodation for budget, mid-range and luxury options? Detailed logistical information? For example, "hikes" many times the book says, "many places to hike", yet, there are practically no hiking trail maps, nor are there many reference to the trail names, or locations, and other details like whether they are well marked, or not. Lonely Planet was the bible for logistical how-to information. The side stories are fun, but the book misses the main point: To provide who, what, where, when and how-to information a person will need upon arrival. It sounds more like a bunch of kids wrote this book rather than an experienced traveler/writer. I would say, this book had about 10% of the info I was looking for. And a lot of fluff, and repetition. I have more then 50 Lonely Planet guides. I would not recommend this book.

I had been using Lonely Planet guides for 20+ years when I started to notice a theme: they shifted from useful resources full of insider tips in around 2016, to nonsense marketing that glosses over practical important information today. Specifically, they've almost completely removed all safety oriented information in favor of suggestions that can get you killed or kidnapped. These read like someone wrote them from their living room sofa relying on marketing brochures and press releases from the local tourism bureau. The "Experience" series is still useful for help in organizing how to spend time in unfamiliar places, but the country guides are all but useless and full of inaccuracies and "narrative framing." The Kenya 2024 guide is especially bad – I just threw it away while still there. What a pity!

If you want to work through your Kenya trip like a shopping list, you might find the new LP quite efficient. Unfortunately, the book is riddled with unnecessary errors. On page 8, a full-page photo shows a rhino in Amboseli Park, naturally in front of Kilimanjaro - but there haven't been any there for decades; the editors have fallen for freeware from the Internet, either ancient or a fake. The same applies to Lake Nakuru: only LP readers can experience the Big Five there - unfortunately, everyone else has to do without the non-existent elephants (p. 107). In the Lamu archipelago, the vacation resort of Shela is apparently placed to the wrong island (p. 334), and on Lake Turkana the Molo people are moved from the eastern to the western shore (p. 303). Shimba Hills is not a National Park (but a Reserve, p. 237), and when entering the country directly from Europe or the USA, you do NOT need a yellow fever vaccination, as claimed on page 312 … the list could be extended. On a side note: a book that is obviously so proud of its thousands of graphic gimmicks could have been a little more careful in its choice of motifs: a picture of a Kenyan license plate could certainly have been obtained for the explanation of parking fees in Nairobi - a SW24070 is not even found on secret service vehicles there...

What a waste of time and money. This edition is absolutely riddled with mistakes - some of which could cost you your life - Nairobi National Park is noted as a great spot for hiking? Really? Because you are not allowed out of your car apart from at designated picnic sites for good reason! Other mistakes will be extremely annoying - eg Lake Nakuru NP is apparently a good place to see elephants. There are no elephants there and anyone reading this and not knowing Kenya could plan their trip around information like that. These are just two examples - there are a lot. It is also lacking the most basic of information. Entrance fees, opening hours and a website link for attractions would be useful. I could have written this in my lunch hour and done a better job.

The new look LP guides are very colourful but lack the detailed information, and more importantly the opinion, that can be found in older guides. Very bland and not really enough information. For example pls Ed to stay relegated to small snipets. Better to just look on line at tripadvisor or use older versions!

A former shade of the previously excellent LPs. Incomplete maps, no opening hours of sites, no prices, shallow history section, factual mistakes, and cluttered with many large colourful images that add weight to a travel guide which should be as compact as possible… Without google maps I would have been very lost indeed. To be fair, the book is still useful for planning the trip.