Kenya Rhinos and Rift Valley Lakes: Ol Pejeta, Naivasha and the Maasai Mara, 6 Nights

A representative meets you outside customs at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and introduces your driver-guide, who runs through the plan for the week before driving you to the hotel. The afternoon is free to rest. Dinner is at the hotel tonight, and it is worth packing a warm layer in your day bag for the cool highland morning tomorrow.

The road climbs north through the tea and coffee country of the central highlands and crosses the Equator near Nanyuki. Ol Pejeta is a private conservancy on the Laikipia plateau, with Mount Kenya often visible to the east. It is known for its black rhino population and for sheltering the last northern white rhinos. You arrive for lunch, with the afternoon for wildlife viewing in the conservancy.

After breakfast the drive heads south-west and down into the Rift Valley, five to six hours with stops. In the afternoon a boat carries you across the lake, past hippos and waterbirds, to Crescent Island. There are no big predators here, so you can walk with a guide among giraffe, zebra, waterbuck and wildebeest, which is rare on a Kenyan safari.

A day trip north to Lake Nakuru National Park, a fenced park around a soda lake with acacia woodland and steep escarpments. It is one of the best places in Kenya to see both black and white rhino, and buffalo, Rothschild’s giraffe and waterbuck are common. Flamingo numbers vary with the lake level. A picnic lunch is served in the park before the drive back to Naivasha.

The drive west crosses farmland and then open Maasai rangeland, reaching the Mara around lunchtime. After a rest you go out on the first Mara game drive in the late afternoon, looking for lion, cheetah, elephant and the big herds of topi, zebra and gazelle that graze the plains. You return to camp for dinner as darkness falls.

Out early, while the air is cool and the predators are still on the move, and back to camp for breakfast and a quiet middle of the day. The second drive leaves in the late afternoon and runs until sunset. If you want to see the reserve from above, a dawn balloon flight with breakfast in the bush can be added.

Breakfast in the Mara, then the long drive back to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, arriving in the afternoon for an evening departure. A scheduled light-aircraft flight from a Mara airstrip to Nairobi saves most of the day on the road and can be added at extra cost; we time it to your international connection.