8 Day Kenya Classic Safari

Our driver guide collects you in Nairobi and we head southeast towards the Tanzanian border, roughly 230 kilometres and four to five hours, tarmac to Emali and a rougher stretch to the gate. Amboseli covers 392 square kilometres in Kajiado County and sits within a wider Maasai ecosystem of around 8,000 square kilometres. We go straight in for an afternoon game drive, which is one of the two windows when Kilimanjaro is usually clear of cloud. The park holds around 1,800 elephants, and they move between the swamps and the plains on established routes, often crossing directly in front of the vehicle. Give them right of way and switch the engine off; the best viewing here happens when a family walks past a stationary vehicle rather than the other way round. Amboseli sits at around 1,150 metres and is dry, dusty and warm; a scarf and covers for camera gear both earn their place.

Out before sunrise, because the mountain hides in cloud through the middle of the day and the reliable windows are the first hour after dawn and the last before dark. Kilimanjaro rises to 5,895 metres about seventy kilometres south in Tanzania. Amboseli‘s elephants have been followed continuously since the early 1970s in the longest running study of wild elephants anywhere, which is why some of the last great tuskers in Africa live here, bulls carrying ivory that reaches almost to the ground. We work the permanent swamps at Enkongo Narok and Longinye, fed by snowmelt that percolates underground from the mountain for decades before surfacing, then climb Observation Hill for the full circle view over the swamps and the dry lakebed. Dust is constant, so keep camera gear covered. The dust is also what gives Amboseli its amber haze, which makes backlit herds work so well in the last hour of light.

The long transfer of the trip, and worth naming honestly. We run back north past Nairobi and out onto the Rift Valley floor, roughly six to seven hours in total with a lunch stop, taking in the escarpment viewpoint on the descent, which is the classic view over the valley. Lake Naivasha is a freshwater lake at around 1,880 metres, ringed with fever tree woodland and papyrus, and it is a completely different proposition from the alkaline lakes further north. We check you in and take a late afternoon boat out among the hippo pods, with fish eagles working the shoreline and pelicans and cormorants on the water. Ask the boatman to call an eagle down; they know exactly which birds respond. Dinner by the lake with hippo grazing on the lawns after dark. They come out of the water to feed at night, which is worth knowing before you walk between buildings without a torch.

A day on foot and on two wheels, which is rare in Kenya. We start at Crescent Island, a private walking area on the lake with no dangerous predators, where you walk unaccompanied by a vehicle among giraffe, zebra, waterbuck, eland and impala. Being at ground level with a giraffe rather than looking up from a seat changes the scale of everything. Afterwards, Hell’s Gate National Park, one of very few Kenyan parks where cycling is permitted among wildlife: you ride between towering red cliffs past Fischer’s Tower with zebra and buffalo grazing alongside the track, then walk down into the gorge with a local guide, through narrow sandstone passages carved by hot springs. Back to Naivasha in the late afternoon. Elsamere, the former home of Joy Adamson, is the alternative if you would rather not cycle. It sits on the lakeshore in old gardens and does a good afternoon tea, and the colobus in the trees there are easy to see.

A short drive north, only about an hour and a half, which makes this the easiest morning of the trip. Nakuru covers about 188 square kilometres around a shallow alkaline lake and forms part of the UNESCO listed Kenya Lake System of the Great Rift Valley. We take a full afternoon game drive, concentrating on the southern sector, which is the best rhino ground. Southern white rhino graze in the open in family groups, largely indifferent to vehicles, while eastern black rhino browse in thicker cover and are considerably harder to find. Rothschild’s giraffe work the acacia belt on the eastern shore. We take in Baboon Cliff for the view across the whole lake, and Makalia Falls at the southern end if the water is running, which it does best from April to August. In a hard dry season it can reduce to nothing, leaving a hot empty basin, so our guide will tell you on the day whether it is worth the drive south.

An early game drive before we leave, giving the rhino a second chance in the best light of the day, then southwest through Njoro and Narok, roughly four to five hours to the Mara. On the flamingos, an honest word: Nakuru was once famous for a million of them, and rising water across the Rift lakes has diluted the alkalinity, thinned the algae they feed on and pushed most of them to other lakes. Numbers vary and some are usually present, so treat them as a bonus. We reach the Mara in the afternoon for a first game drive on the way to your camp. The reserve covers about 1,510 square kilometres of rolling grassland, and around 2,400 elephants live across the greater ecosystem alongside buffalo, giraffe, topi and eland. Black rhino exist here but are scarce and heavily protected, so the Big Five is achievable rather than routine. Dinner at camp with tomorrow planned around the most recent sightings.

Out at first light with a picnic lunch, because the Mara rewards a full day rather than two short drives. Its real strength is the resident predator population, present in every month regardless of the migration. Something in the order of 850 lions live across the greater Mara, and the open country makes them far easier to find than in wooded parks. Cheetah do well on these plains and are seen more reliably here than almost anywhere in East Africa, while leopard work the riverine forest along the Mara and Talek rivers. From July to October the herds are here, around 1.5 million wildebeest with several hundred thousand zebra, and the crossings are what everybody comes for, though nobody can predict one. Over 470 bird species have been recorded. Raptors are the headline, with martial eagle, bateleur and six vulture species working the plains, and vulture behaviour at a kill repays proper watching rather than driving past.

A last drive at dawn, which is when the cats are still moving and the light across the grass is at its best. If you have not yet found a leopard or the herds shifted overnight, this is the morning that can change the trip, so we go out early and stay out. Afterwards, back to camp for breakfast and then the road east through Narok to Nairobi, roughly five to six hours with the escarpment climb at the end. We can stop at Narok town, the largest Maasai town and the gateway to the reserve, which has a small museum on Maasai history and customs. If you would rather not spend the day driving, we can put you on a scheduled flight from a Mara airstrip to Wilson Airport instead, roughly forty five minutes. That turns your last day into a morning and puts you at the airport in good order rather than after dark.