As findings from the shores of Lake Turkana prove, the region has been inhabited since the dawn of the very first humans. In the past few centuries, the land has been roamed by various pastoralist peoples who constantly competed for pasture, water and animals.
In 1886, the first Europeans to travel through Samburu County, on their way to Lake Turkana, were the Hungarian Count Samuel Teleki and his Austrian companion Ludwig von Höhnel who gave the biggest permanent desert lake the name ‘Lake Rudolf’ (after Prince Rudolf, then archduke of the Austria-Hungary Empire). The name stuck until the 1970s, when it was officially renamed Lake Turkana.
The next Europeans to follow Teleki and von Höhnel were big game hunters who set camp at the animal-rich banks of the Ewaso Nyiro.
