Kenya Map

Kenya straddles the equator and covers an area of some 583,000 sq km, which includes around 13,600 sq km of inland water in the form of part of Lake Victoria. It is bordered to the north by the arid bushlands and deserts of Ethiopia and Sudan, to the east by the wastes of Somalia and the Indian Ocean, to the west by Uganda and Lake Victoria, and to the south by Tanzania. Kenya is dominated by the Rift Valley, a vast range of valleys following more than a 60000km-long crack in the earth's crust, and dividing the flat plains of the coast from the gentle hills along the lakeshore. Nairobi, the capital, sits in the central highlands at the eastern edge of the Rift Valley. The other main population centres are Mombasa, on the coast, and Kisumu, on the shores of Lake Victoria. Kenya can roughly be divided into four zones: the coastal plains, the Rift Valley and central highlands, the lakeshore and the arid wastelands of northern Kenya. The main rivers in Kenya are the Athi/Glana River, which empties into the Indian Ocean near Malindi, and the Tana River, which hits the coast midway between Malindi and Lamu. In addition to Lake Victoria, Kenya has numerous small volcanic lakes and mighty Lake Turkana, or Jade Sea, which straddles the Ethiopian border. Within volcanic craters and on the Rift Valley floor are several soda lakes, rich in sodium bicarbonate, created by the filtering of water through mineral-rich volcanic rock and subsequent evaporation.