At Kenya's far northern frontier lies one of the natural wonders of the world. Lake Turkana is a massive inland sea, at nearly 2,500 square miles (6,400 square kilometers) the largest desert lake in the world. This single body of water is more than 150 miles (250 kilometers) long, comparable in length to the entire Kenyan coast. It is widely known as the Jade Sea, because of the almost incandescent color of its waters. After a long journey through the sweltering deserts and lava flows of northern Kenya, the sight of this vast body of bright turquoise water comes as an unearthly, ethereal vision. Turkana has one of the longest living histories on earth, and recent fossil evidence unearthed at Koobi Fora has led to the lake being awarded the appellation, "The Cradle of Mankind".

The lake is a source of life for some of Kenya's most remote tribes. The Turkana, with ancestral ties to Uganda, live a semi-nomadic existence along the shores of the lake. The country's smallest tribe, the El Molo, live a hunter-gatherer existence on its shores, congregating in villages of distinctively rounded reed huts.

The lake enjoys the dubious distinction of being home to the world's single largest crocodile population. In Turkana, these reptiles grow to record size. Some of the largest specimens can be found on remote windswept Central Island.