Kenya Safari: Amboseli, Lake Naivasha and the Maasai Mara, 6 Nights

You are met after customs at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and introduced to the driver-guide who will be with you for the rest of the safari. After a short briefing on the week ahead you are driven to your hotel. The rest of the day is for resting after the flight; dinner is at the hotel, and an early night is wise before tomorrow’s drive south.

After breakfast the road leaves the city and runs south-east across dry Maasai country towards the Tanzanian border, a drive of four to five hours with a stop on the way. Lunch is at the lodge, and in the late afternoon you head into the park for your first game drive, when the heat eases and elephants start moving back towards the swamps to drink.

A whole day in the park, with a picnic lunch carried in the vehicle. Amboseli is small and open, so game viewing is easy: elephant families wade through the spring-fed marshes, and buffalo, zebra, wildebeest and hippo share the grass. Early morning gives the best chance of a clear view of Kilimanjaro, which rises just across the border and often hides in cloud by midday.

The longest drive of the trip, six to seven hours back past Nairobi and down the escarpment into the Great Rift Valley. Lake Naivasha is a freshwater lake fringed with yellow fever trees and papyrus. In the afternoon an hour on the water by boat brings you close to hippo pods and to the fish eagles perched on dead branches along the shore. Dinner is at the lodge.

A morning drive west through farmland and then Maasai grazing country brings you to the edge of the Mara in time for lunch at the camp or lodge. In the late afternoon you set out on your first game drive across the rolling grassland, where lion prides, cheetah, elephant, giraffe and huge herds of plains game are all regularly seen. Dinner is back at camp.

Two game drives, one soon after sunrise and one in the late afternoon, the hours when predators hunt and the light is softest for photographs. The middle of the day is for lunch and rest at camp. For a different view of the reserve, a hot-air balloon flight lifts off at dawn and lands for a champagne breakfast in the bush; it can be added at extra cost.

After breakfast your driver-guide takes you back across the Rift Valley to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, arriving in the afternoon for an evening flight home. If you would rather not spend the last day on the road, a scheduled light-aircraft flight from a Mara airstrip to Nairobi takes about an hour and can be added.