Today is departure day, and you fly to Kenya with stopovers on the way.

You will be met at the airport by our local guide, who will drive you to your hotel. After a short break, when you can freshen up, your first encounter with some of Africa’s wild animals awaits you! You’ll be visiting “The Giraffe Centre”, where you get right up close to the giraffes.

Lunch is enjoyed at Karen Blixen Coffee Garden – the old administration building at the writer’s coffee plantation.

If time permits, there will be a chance to visit the nearby Kazuri ceramics workshop and jewellery factory, where single mothers make clay beads – a quite remarkable employment project.

There will also be time to relax a little today before the adventure really starts tomorrow!

After breakfast, the tour heads north. You cross the equator near Mount Kenya and are given a demonstration of the Coriolis effect, i.e. why the winds are deflected to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere.

After standing with a leg in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere, you drive to Samburu. Along the way, you will experience several climate and vegetation zones: plateaux, mountain areas and more dry areas. You will check in at your lodge in Samburu, where lunch is ready for you.

After lunch, you will go on your first proper game drive. Samburu is characterised by a number of animals which are only found here: Grevy’s zebra, the Gerenuk antelope, the enormous oryx, the Somali ostrich and the reticulated giraffe. In fact, on this safari, you may get to see three different giraffes: reticulated giraffes in Samburu, Rothschild giraffes at Lake Naivasha and Masai giraffes in Masai Mara.

Full-day game drive where you bring a picnic lunch – and perhaps even breakfast – so there’s more time for the safari itself.

In addition to the “special five”, you may also see elephants, leopards, lions, cheetahs, impalas, and lots of birds here in Samburu. The locals believe that Samburu has a bird sound all of its own. The landscapes are varied, and you may be lucky enough to see the Masais’ relatives, the Samburuans, and one of their camel caravans.

After breakfast, you drive down into the Rift Valley – a 5,000-km-long gorge that extends through the whole of East Africa and is filled with ancient volcanic craters – a sharp contrast to Samburu.

A few stops are made along the way – at Thompson Falls, among other places, where you can buy lunch if you wish.

If the traffic and time are on your side, you’ll go on an afternoon boat ride on Lake Naivasha, which is located at the highest point of the Great Rift Valley at 1,890 metres above sea level. The area is famous for its hippos, giraffes, waterbucks, vervet monkeys and profusion of birds, both sedentary and migratory. You go ashore and go for a walk on the small island, Crescent Island, which is home to zebras, giraffes and wildebeest, all of which are relatively tame, so you can get right up close to them. If the traffic means that you can’t make the boat trip today, you’ll do it tomorrow instead, before heading to Masai Mara.

There’s no getting away from it: Masai Mara IS the highlight of any Kenya tour. And today, it’s your turn. Early in the morning, you head to the fantastic Masai Mara game reserve,  the Kenyan part of the vast Serengeti ecosystem and, in the rainy season, home to probably the world’s largest concentration of wildlife. You should be prepared for the fact that the drive takes a good part of the day. However, there is Wi-Fi and power in the car, making it an ideal opportunity to upload holiday photos, take a nap or just enjoy the sight of Kenya zipping past. You drive through a number of small villages which are almost always abuzz with street markets, and a couple of stops are made along the way.

On the mighty plains, you will encounter large herds of elephants, wildebeest, zebras, hippos, giraffes, gazelles and other herbivorous prey of the hunting lions, hyenas, leopards and cheetahs.

You will get right up close to a host of animals, which you experience from the protection of the Land Cruiser.

From July to October, you can experience the 1,200 km long migration for water and fresh grass of more than one million wildebeest along with a couple of hundred thousand zebras plus countless Thompson gazelles. It is during this migration that many gazelles fall victim to the huge Nile crocodiles when crossing the Mara River.

Many people believe it is best to visit Masai Mara during the great migration, but there are animals on the grasslands all year round.

Over the next couple of days, you will be going on a game drive morning and afternoon. On some days, you will bring both breakfast and a picnic lunch with you, which you can enjoy along with amazing views, but this is all agreed with the guide, who knows everything about the animals and weather conditions.

You can never have too much Masai Mara as the savannah is so changeable – the light, the colours, the smells, the mix of animals – everything changes all the time.

If you would like to visit a Masai village, you should arrange this with the guide on the safari. It costs 25 USD per person (not included in the price of the holiday) and this is paid directly to the Masai people. The Masai are a proud people who live just as their ancestors have done for 400 years. The Masai measure their wealth by the number of cows and wives they have. The more they have, the richer they are. The wives are each installed their own hut, and they do the domestic work, such as building huts and fetching firewood. Their daily diet is milk mixed with cattle blood and perhaps a little corn porridge. For celebrations, the meat of their own animals is served.

Unfortunately, it’s time to say goodbye to the savannah. You drive back to Nairobi and catch a flight home to the UK.

It is possible to purchase a direct flight from Masai Mara to Nairobi to avoid the drive. Contact us for a price.

It is possible to combine this safari with a beach holiday in Mombasa or Zanzibar. If you fancy a beach holiday as well, we recommend a look at the following tours:

Hakuna Matata & beach holiday in Mombasa

Hakuna Matata & beach holiday in Zanzibar

You land in the UK late morning.