Lake Nakuru, in all its grandeur and beauty, will take your breath away.

When you drive into Lake Nakuru National Park, there is a never ending canopy of yellow barked acacia, with buffalo herds, impalas and flocks of Marabou storks — nature’s garbage collectors — all around you. Before you take all this in, the lake suddenly appears in the near distance.

And like a child denied love, the lake is withdrawn and distant, figuratively and literally. Withdrawn because the water has receded, as if repelled by contact with humanity.

The last time I visited the lake was two years ago, and the lake waters were already drying up then.

My visit this time feels like visiting a patient in hospital to find tubes sticking out of them.

Apparently, the lake covered a third of the park, now it’s a mere fifth.

The water, initially two meters deep at the lake’s deepest point, is now only half a meter deep.

The lake is dying. Three rivers that drain into it — Makalia, Nderit, Lamblia — have dried up. Only the Njoro river lethargically drains into it.

Worse still, chemical and industrial waste from the approximately 200,000 inhabitants of Nakuru town finds its way into the lake through surface inflows.

Yes, Lake Nakuru is in dire straits.

“This lake will not be here in 10 years,” said Joseph Dadacha, the park’s deputy warden. All the four rivers originate from the Mau Forest water tower, itself threated by human encroachment, and theNjoro alone cannot sustain the lake. Something has to give.

But despite the doom and gloom that surrounds the lake’s future, there is a charm that makes Lake Nakuru National Park generate Ksh3 billion ($38.49 million) annually in revenue from tourism, the most by of any park in Kenya.

It could be the flamingoes. Of the six million flamingoes in the world, four million are found in East Africa and one million call Lake Nakuru home.

Or the birds, the entire 400 species of them, 80 of which are water fowls.

Standing by the lake and doing little else than let your senses drink in the beauty is a spiritual.

But when the wind blows in your face, the smell is fetid, algae and damp flamingo poop.

Sight of the flamingoes — a sharp dash of pink against the bland canvas of the lake — fills you with both wonder and sadness. The latter more since the lake’s future is uncertain.

But it’s not only the lake that dominates the beauty of this 188sqkm park.

The park was declared a rhino sanctuary in 1983.

It is home to 60 white rhinos (originally found in South Africa) and 40 black rhinos. We saw two white rhinos grazing.

“Do you know why it’s called the white rhino?” Dadacha asks the group. The only answer seems to come from the wind. He seems pleased.

“It’s because the South Africans call it ‘Weit Rhino’ to mean wide mouthed, but I guess someone heard ‘white,’ and the name stuck. The horn is reputed to have aphrodisiac properties, and that’s why it’s hunted heavily.” He says the sanctuary has one of the biggest rhinos, bigger than those found in South Africa.

As we drive away from the rhinos, he adds casually, “Did you know that the rhino, in one mount, can mate with a female for a straight 70 minutes, while ejaculating almost throughout the whole process?” All the men in the group turn to him with a look of both disbelief and envy. “Trust rhinos to try and make the lion look bad,” someone sighs.

A drive up the hills brings us to Baboon Cliff, famous for the stone shed where Kenya’s founding president Jomo Kenyatta is said to have spent much time marvelling at the wonders of the park.

Dusk falls slowly, and from our perch the reflection of lights of Nakuru town shimmer on the water’s surface, an intrusive scene that perhaps dramatises how human activity is violating the lake.

Where: 156km Northwest of Nairobi. Main gate is 4km from Nakuru Town Center.

Park Fees: Ksh 300 per person

Foreigners: $60.