Lonely Planet Publications has put out it's fifth edition of Kenya. This is a travel guide. In fact, it's an excellent travel guide. The first thing I do when I get any book is flip through it. As I flipped the pages I was immediately impressed. I saw maps! Lots of maps! There are maps for just about any place you would consider visiting in Kenya. What's more, the maps have hotels, restaurants, parks, and other points of interest marked. I did notice that there wasn't a map for the small village I lived in, then again it's pretty tiny.

The bulk of the book is information about cities and national parks and reserves. The cities are grouped into different regions of Kenya - Nairobi, The Coast, The Rift Valley, The Central Highlands, Western Kenya, and Northern Kenya. For each city mentioned there is information on how to get to and from the city, getting around, recommended accommodations, restaurants, and things to do. The authors have also mentioned different crimes or scams to watch out for in the particular city you are reading about.

The national parks and reserves are listed in alphabetical order right after the regions of Kenya. Again the same information is given about the parks as for the cities.

One nice feature on the Lonely Planet website is the postcards. These are comments from travelers about what they found in the country they are visiting. Here are the postcards from Kenya.

This travel guide for Kenya has tons of useful and helpful information. If you buy only one travel guide for your Kenyan travels, this is it. Buy this book.

A nice add-on book for Kenya is Swahili Phrasebook. It's logically organized, very compact, has English to Swahili and Swahili to English dictionaries along with all the Swahili a traveler would ever need to know.



A review copy of Lonely Planet's Kenya was sent by the publisher free of charge.