Kenya Big 5 & Rhino Tracking Safari

You arrive at Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport where a professional driver-guide transfers you to nearby Wilson Airport for a scheduled flight to Samburu National Reserve. A guide meets you at the airstrip and drives you to Saruni Samburu, tucked into panoramic mountains on the edge of the reserve. Accommodation is elegant and very comfortable and you have amazing views of a sprawling and unspoilt wilderness. A complementary head and neck massage sets the tone perfectly, and you enjoy a mix of activities ranging from game drives and walks to cultural tours, riverside picnics and displays of Samburu song and dance.

Samburu guides accompany you as you make your way to Saruni Rhino, an intimate tented camp set in a private wildlife reserve and one of the few places in Kenya – or indeed Africa – where you can still track black rhino on foot. There is also a nearby rhino sanctuary and an elephant orphanage to visit as well as game drives to go on and bird watching to enjoy – the sight of thousands of sand grouse drinking is one to remember. And for a unique cultural experience, your guide will take you to the Singing Wells where local herdsmen call their cattle to drink through songs that are apparently recognisable only by their own cattle.

It is about a 90-minute flight from the Samburu airstrip to the Masai Mara, enabling you to change environments quickly and comfortably. Contiguous with the Serengeti, the Masai Mara is most famous for its seasonal Wildebeest Migration with the bulk of the animals passing through between the end of June and the beginning of November. It is a time of dramatic encounters between the wildebeest and their predators – lions, leopards, wild dogs and spotted hyenas – but such is the depth of wildlife in the Mara that it remains a highly rewarding destination at any time of year. Game drives with Maasai guides take you into the heart of the action and there are also exciting bush walks to go on as well as the chance to book an optional hot-air balloon flight over the savannah; it is a pre-dawn start and you are rewarded with a well-deserved champagne breakfast.

Visit the rhino sanctuary on the way to the airstrip and once again admire the hippos and the crocodiles of the Mara River. Transfer to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport with Saruni driver and vehicle. Depending on the time of your international flight, stop at the Talisman or Carnivore restaurant for dinner.