Lake Bogoria sits in a half-graben basin just south of Lake Baringo, approximately 120 kilometers north of Nakuru and a little north of the equator. The lake stretches roughly 20 kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide, divided into three lobes by shallow tectonically controlled sills. The Siracho Escarpment rises steeply along its eastern and southern borders. Formerly named Lake Hannington after the Anglican missionary James Hannington who visited in 1885, it was once part of a larger freshwater body that included what is now Lake Baringo. Today the two lakes are separated by a low drainage divide near Loboi village at 999 meters. When Bogoria's waters rise high enough, they spill northward into Baringo's drainage basin. Sediment cores from the lake floor reveal that the lake has not always been saline: freshwater conditions existed for several periods during the past 10,000 years, a reminder that these Rift Valley lakes are restless, cycling between states on timescales both geological and human.

Lake Bogoria contains the highest concentration of true geysers in Africa. At least 18 geysers have been active in the 35 years before 2008, erupting up to five meters high from four locations around the lake. About 200 hot springs dot the shoreline, their output ranging from warm seeps to near-boiling vents. On the Loburu delta, roughly 60 hot springs discharge across a plain of silts and gravels, and at 20 percent of them, travertine deposits are actively forming, an unusual occurrence because the carbonate precipitation happens at temperatures above 80 degrees Celsius. The springs are alkaline, rich in silica and nitrate, and the microbial mats around them harbor specialized communities of Phormidium, Spirulina, Synechococcus, and Calothrix. Geyser activity fluctuates with the lake level: as waters rise, some geysers are inundated and fall silent; as they recede, dormant vents reawaken. The landscape is, quite literally, breathing.

The lesser flamingo's dependence on alkaline lakes makes Bogoria one of the most important feeding grounds in the world for the species. The Kenya lake system, which includes Bogoria, Lake Nakuru, and Lake Elmenteita, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in part because of these flamingo populations. Thirteen globally threatened bird species find habitat here, along with nesting colonies of great white pelicans. Beyond the birds, the reserve's surrounding scrubland supports hippopotamus, African lion, and greater kudu. The lake's relatively stable water level makes it a critical refuge during droughts, when other Rift Valley lakes shrink and their shoreline habitats collapse. Around the margins, six distinct types of wetland coexist: proximal hot springs, hot spring marshes, artesian blister wetlands, papyrus swamps, floodplain marshes, and hypersaline littoral zones. This diversity of microhabitats packed into a single basin is what gives Bogoria its ecological richness.

The lake area was the traditional home of the Endorois people before they were forcibly displaced in the 1970s to make way for the Lake Bogoria game reserve. In 2009, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights issued a landmark ruling ordering the Kenyan government to restore the Endorois to their historic land, compensate them for losses, and share reserve profits. By 2022, Minority Rights Group reported that the ruling remained unimplemented and many Endorois still lived in severe poverty. In 2024, the Endorois allied with the Ogiek people, who had themselves been evicted from the Mau Forest by the British colonial government in 1920 and won their own court case in 2017. Neither ruling has been enforced. On February 6, 2024, both communities demonstrated together in Nairobi demanding implementation. The area is now inhabited by Tugen and Jemps pastoralists, but the question of Endorois return remains unresolved, a human dimension to a landscape more often described in terms of geology and flamingos.