Kenya — where to go and when
2 destinations covered
High plateau and warm ocean in one country, an hour apart by air: the two Kenyan places published here behave like different climates rather than different regions. Nairobi stands just south of the equator at an altitude that produces the anomaly of a tropical latitude with cool evenings, gardens, jacarandas and standing forest — and a national park of open plains, where lion, rhino, giraffe and buffalo live against the skyline of a capital, which exists nowhere else. Diani, on the south coast, is another register entirely: one band of white sand backed by palms and raised coral forest, a reef a few hundred metres out that turns the Indian Ocean into a pale lagoon and empties it to ankle depth twice a day. Behind the beach, the Swahili coast is older than the hotels — mosques, dhow carpenters, fishing villages — and black-and-white colobus cross the road on rope bridges. Our index puts daily costs at roughly a quarter of French ones. Most travellers come for wildlife; the standing mistake is treating the coast as an afterthought.
When to go
June to September works for the plateau, and January and February are the extra months our figures add; the shore clears none. The capital is temperate rather than hot, 23 °C by day in July, and evenings genuinely call for a layer; the coast does the opposite, holding 33.7 °C in February and barely cooling in July. Rain is the real divider. Inland counts 150 rainy days a year, with 27 of them in April alone, while the beach records 184. The long rains of April and May are the weeks to avoid upcountry.
The places we cover, side by side
| Place | Favourable months | Warmest month, avg. high (°C) | Coldest month, avg. high (°C) | Rainy days a year (≥ 1 mm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diani Beach | none | 33.7 | 28.8 | 184 |
| Nairobi | January, February, June, July, August, September | 27.5 | 23.0 | 150 |
Figures measured at the weather station nearest each place, then averaged over the warmest and the coldest months of the year — not over a fixed calendar season. Each destination page carries its own month-by-month table, its station and its sample size.
Getting around
Domestic flights link the plateau and the coast in about an hour and are how most people move between them; a modern railway does the same run in most of a day, with the landscape as compensation. In the capital, app-ordered cars are the visitor's default, shared minibuses are the local system and take some nerve, and traffic sets the pace of any plan. On the coast, motorbike taxis and a short ferry south of the port cover everything. The airports lie 12 km and 32 km out.
Budget
Country price level compared with France : −73 %
Price index for restaurants and hotels, France = 1000, from European purchasing power parities. It is a country average: it says nothing about one hotel in particular.
Destinations in Kenya
Diani BeachDiani Beach stretches along Kenya's south coast as a single white strip backed by palms and coral rag forest. A reef sits a few hundred metres offshore and…
NairobiNairobi stands on a high plateau just south of the equator, which is why a tropical latitude produces cool evenings and a green city. A national park full…Frequently asked questions
Does the capital deserve days of its own?
Two, and no more for most people. The national museum, the railway history that explains why the city is where it is, and the park on the southern edge fill them comfortably, and the food is better than its reputation. Beyond that, Nairobi is a place people pass through on the way to the reserves, and the traffic makes a third day expensive in time.
Beach first or wildlife first?
Wildlife first, almost always. Game days start before dawn and involve long hours in a vehicle, so doing them while still fresh makes sense, and the coast is a much better place to recover than to prepare. The other argument is weather: the plateau holds its June-to-September window while the shore stays warm all year, so the order costs nothing, and a flight between them takes about an hour.
Updated on 21 September 2026