Thimlich Ohinga

Even seven years after its inscription as a WHS, Thimlich Ohinga is still one of the 20 least visited by our members. Only three were there before me, and this low popularity was confirmed by looking at the visitors’ book, as it showed about 10 entries per month for 2025. The site just lies too far from the general Kenyan tourist itineraries, which focus on the East Coast beaches and the safari parks in the center. It is close to Lake Victoria, though, and has a fine rural setting.

I got there with a driver/guide from the hub of Kisumu (Kenya’s 4th largest city), which has daily flights to Nairobi and decent places to stay, eat and shop. It took us 3 h 20 min to reach the site. The distance is only 163 km, but the final 19 km is on an unpaved road - sand with some stones and holes, but doable with a 4x4. From that road, Thimlich is signposted as well. After about 12km, the road beyond on was flooded (this may not be the case when you arrive later in the dry season) – a passer-by showed us a detour, which was also clearly visible on maps.me.

While all of Kenya has gone digital, this site accepts cash payment only. The fee for foreigners is 500 KSh (3,50 EUR) at the moment. Later, I learned that the staff feels abandoned by the National Museums of Kenya and the Province; there’s no electricity or …

Tucked away in the far western corner of Kenya lies Thimlich Ohinga, hidden deep in the countryside. Although it’s been seven years since the site was inscribed on the World Heritage List, very few community members or tourists seem to make their way out here. A fun fact: Els visited just a week before us, and according to the visitor book, only seven people had been there in the meantime.

Unlike another reviewer, we approached the site from the Masai Mara via the Musiara Gate. After spending two nights in the park and enjoying a morning safari, we left the gate at 10 a.m. We had expected paved roads once we reached the main road — but we were far off the beaten track, and the road conditions were often very poor. The roads only began to improve after we entered Migori County. The final 14 kilometers to the site, coming from the south, were again on rough dirt roads — not in the best shape either. A high-clearance vehicle was definitely necessary. The 130-kilometer drive from Musiara Gate to the site took just over four hours. We arrived around 2:15 p.m. and were warmly welcomed at the entrance as the first visitors of the day.

The visit itself lasted about 1 to 1.5 hours. We paid 500 KES per person, and the same man who greeted us at the gate also served as our guide. We explored all four enclosures that make up the inscribed heritage site. …

Visit in January 2021

To partially compensate for being forced to cancel plans for visits to many top-level Sites in 2020 I intended to make visits to a few unreviewed, or seldom-visited Sites. As it turned out, most of those sites were unreviewed for good reasons, especially because onerous bureaucracy and remote locations made reaching them impractical, or impossible. The best I could come up with was a visit to Thimlich Ohinga, a Site that was unvisited primarily because it was only recently inscribed, in 2018. The Site is located in the southwestern corner of Kenya, in an area where sugarcane is the dominant farm crop, and which was pleasantly green during that time of year. However, while travel around that part of the country is straightforward enough, reaching the Site itself will likely be a lengthy process, no matter from which direction one approaches, and the effort may be greater than the payoff. Traveling to the vicinity from Nairobi, probably via the Kenya Lakes System Site, would be relatively simple, but still a rather long haul. It would probably be easier to reach the Site from the western gates of the Serengeti, in Tanzania. However, in that case most people would need visas for both countries.

Since I was arriving from the northwest, I decided to stay in the small town of Rodi Kopany, which is 46 km to northeast of the Site and has a couple of decent accommodation options, and then ride down to the …