Kenya
Where the wild things roam
About This Journey
Kenya arrives differently from other countries. Within hours of landing, you are standing at a fence watching a Rothschild giraffe push its head through a window for breakfast, and within a day you are on a grass airstrip in the Maasai Mara watching a lion pride cross the road. This is one of the world's great short journeys: two days in Nairobi, then a light aircraft flight west into the Mara -- 1,510 square kilometres of open savannah that holds more wildlife per acre than almost anywhere on earth and hosts, between July and October, the Great Wildebeest Migration with 1.5 million animals.
What's Included
Day-by-Day Itinerary
Nairobi — The City That Surprises
Karen, Nairobi
Arrive at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and transfer privately southwest through Nairobi to Karen -- the leafy suburb named after Karen Blixen, where the Ngong Hills rise at the edge of the city. Giraffe Manor sits at the end of a long driveway surrounded by indigenous forest, and the first giraffe head appears at approximately eye-level before you have found your room key. Settle in, then drive to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust -- the world's most successful elephant and rhino orphan rescue programme. Return to the Manor in time for sundowners on the veranda as the giraffes come back for their evening feed.
Out of Africa
Nairobi
A full private day in and around Nairobi with a guide who knows the city's multiple histories -- colonial, post-colonial, conservation, contemporary. The morning takes in the Karen Blixen Museum at the farm that became Out of Africa: the long views to the Ngong Hills, the rooms preserved as they were. From there, the Giraffe Centre -- the conservation breeding programme for Rothschild giraffes, critically endangered and reduced to fewer than 800 individuals in the wild -- where feeding them by hand from an elevated platform remains one of Nairobi's most disarming experiences. The afternoon is yours.
Into the Mara
Maasai Mara
A private transfer to Wilson Airport in Nairobi for the 45-minute light aircraft flight west to the Maasai Mara -- a flight that is itself part of the experience, with the city giving way to the Rift Valley escarpment and then the open savannah of the Mara below. Land on a grass airstrip and transfer directly to Mara Plains Camp in the Olare Motorogi Conservancy -- a private conservancy bordering the national reserve that carries significantly fewer vehicles and better wildlife density than the park's busier circuits. Check in, meet your guide, and head straight out for an afternoon game drive.
The Migration
Maasai Mara
The Great Wildebeest Migration arrives in the Maasai Mara each year between July and October, and the Mara River crossings are the event around which everything else in the ecosystem organises itself. 1.5 million wildebeest and hundreds of thousands of zebra, moving in a column that takes days to pass, reaching the Mara River and doing something that appears, from the bank, to be collective insanity -- plunging into crocodile-filled water, swimming hard, climbing steep mud banks, and continuing north. The afternoon is wherever the predators are -- the lion prides that follow the herds, the leopards in the acacia trees, the cheetahs on the open plain.
Big Five and the Open Savannah
Maasai Mara
A full day in the Mara with a structure built around what yesterday's drives have revealed. Dawn game drive at first light -- the Mara at 6am has a quality of silence and gold that the afternoon never quite matches. The Olare Motorogi Conservancy is home to all of the Big Five: lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo, and the black rhino that the conservancy's anti-poaching programme has worked for years to protect. An optional guided walking safari in the late morning. The evening closes with a private bush dinner laid out in the open savannah: a table, candles, lanterns, and the sound of the Mara going about its night around you.
Final Morning, Final Drive
Maasai Mara → Departure
One last early morning in the Mara -- a short game drive on the way to the airstrip, because the light at dawn is too good to leave sleeping. Then the light aircraft back to Wilson Airport in Nairobi and a private transfer to Jomo Kenyatta International for international connections. JKIA handles direct flights to London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dubai, Doha, and Mumbai. Leave carrying the particular quality of light that the Maasai Mara holds in the late afternoon and that you will spend some time trying to find again in other places.
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