Masai Mara Riding Safari

This morning you will either be collected from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport or, if you have arrived earlier, from your Nairobi hotel and transferred to Wilson Airport for your one-hour flight departing at 10 am to Mara Naibosho. It is a beautiful flight passing over the fertile Kikuyu highlands before reaching the Great Rift Valley.

Flying across the volcano-studded floor of the Rift you will reach the Loita Hills and Naibosho airstrip by 11 am. Your guide will meet you and there will be an hour’s drive to camp. Our Olare Lamun camp is set in a grove of acacia trees near a small stream on the southern edge of the Loita plains. Olare Lamun translates to rhino salt lick in Maa. You will have time for lunch and a camp tour before your first evening ride.

After an early morning ride we will come back to camp for a light breakfast and then set out for a game drive and walk up the nearby hill, known as Oloiburmut. We will return to camp for lunch. There will be time for a siesta and at around 4 pm, we will head out to visit the local Masai village.

Today is our first moving day and we break camp in good time, as it is the longest ride of the trip covering nearly 50km. We ride across rolling open plains and the game generally becomes more plentiful as we approach the Mara ecosystem. We should see herds of zebra, topi, giraffe, wildebeest, and gazelle and there is a good chance of seeing elephants and buffalo as well. We reach our camp on the edge of the Masai Game Reserve on the Olare Orok lugga ("lugga" meaning "small stream") in the late afternoon. From camp, we are likely to hear lions and hyenas at night and the abundance of game is apparent everywhere.

A full day of morning and evening rides from camp with the option of driving into the game park for some good photographic opportunities. From the Land Rovers we can get much closer to lion, elephant and buffalo than we are able to do from the horses.

On our second moving day; we head west across the Mara plains and reach the Mara River on the park boundary. We hopefully ford the river (unless in complete flood) at one of the famous wildebeest crossings and then head south-west across the Mara Triangle where we have our picnic lunch before ascending the Soit Ololol Escarpment to reach our camp in a forest glade overlooking the whole Mara ecosystem.

This is our last moving day as we descend the escarpment and ride through the Triangle once more to the same wildebeest crossing on the river. We head in a northwesterly direction and after lunch, we find our final campsite set up on the banks of the Mara River. Close by, there are some hippo pools, and their grunting at night is a special feature of this camp.

With a full day camped on the river we will follow the same morning and evening ride routine, crossing the river with hippos once more. A walk or drive will be on offer after breakfast; providing another good opportunity to take photographs.

You will have a last morning ride before returning to camp and saying goodbye to your horses. After a full English breakfast, you will game drive to the airstrip and fly back to Nairobi at approximately 11am, allowing plenty of time to reach your onward destination.