Month by month
Tsavo in March
March runs on a fuse. The month opens as an extension of February and closes under the first real storms of the long rains, and no forecast issued in January will tell you which week the switch flips.
If you only want the answer
Early March is still dry-season Tsavo; once the long rains break, typically from the second week onward, the game spreads and the cotton-soil tracks in the East turn serious. Book the first ten days and keep everything after them flexible.
What the fuse looks like in numbers
The normals give March 61 mm across 11 rain days, more rain days than any other month in the first half of the year, at highs of 31.9°C and the warmest nights on the card at 22.0°C. The shape matters more than the total: storms build through the afternoon while mornings often stay dry and hot.
Averages also flatten the story. In some years the dry window stretches deep into the month, in others the first big systems land within days of the calendar turning, so a March plan is really a bet on the arrival date.
What the first storms change
Within a week of sustained rain the animals stop needing Aruba, the rivers and the boreholes, because water is suddenly lying everywhere in the bush. Viewing does not vanish, but it stops being concentrated, and the thickening vegetation hides what remains.
Underfoot, the laterite goes greasy and the black-cotton stretches in the East start swallowing two-wheel-drive ambitions; the published KSh 10,500 in-park recovery charge tells you how often that ends badly. Lodge rates begin sliding toward green-season levels as the month ages.
Playing a split month
Front-load without apology: arrive on the 1st rather than the 20th and you are buying February conditions at the start of the discount curve. If your dates land late in the month regardless, weight the itinerary toward Tsavo West, where the volcanic ground tends to drain faster than the East's cotton soil.
Prepay your entry through KWSPay before travelling, keep a full day of slack in the schedule, and treat any track a ranger warns you off as genuinely closed.