Upon landing at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, a Best Safaris representative will meet you and escort you to your private transfer. Your accommodation is ideally positioned is adjacent to Nairobi's largest shopping district, giving you immediate access to the city should you arrive with energy to spare.

Settle in. Let the pace of Africa begin to work on you. Tonight is for rest.

A slow, unhurried morning. Swim, explore the city, or browse the Sarit Centre next door, one of East Africa's most impressive retail destinations. This is not wasted time; it is the deliberate pause before the wilderness begins.

Evening Your hosts convene a welcome mixer. An informal gathering to introduce fellow travellers, discuss the journey ahead, and share your first Kenyan evening together.

After breakfast, the convoy heads north. The drive takes you through rolling highland country — coffee farms, forested ridges, and rural Kenya largely unseen by conventional tourists.

The Equator We pause at the line that divides the hemispheres. A photograph here is almost mandatory. One foot in the north, one in the south.

Sweetwaters Arrive at Sweetwaters Tented Camp, positioned beside a waterhole that draws wildlife with reassuring regularity. After lunch and check-in, an afternoon game drive across Ol Pejeta Conservancy introduces you to one of Africa's most successful rhino protection programmes.

The drive north into Samburu is itself an education. The landscape shifts dramatically — highland green gives way to arid red desert, and the sky seems to widen. The Ewaso Nyiro River threads through the reserve, creating a ribbon of life in an otherwise austere environment.

Samburu is home to species found nowhere else on the standard safari circuit. It's famed Special Five the key wildlife unique to this reserve become your primary targets:

Morning A guided bush walk with Samburu rangers. This is ground-level conservation: learning to read animal tracks, identifying medicinal plants, understanding the daily realities of protecting wildlife in a working landscape.

Late Morning Visit a local primary school. A thoughtful tree-planting activity connects you directly to community-led reforestation efforts in the region.

Before Dinner An authentic honey harvesting and tasting session at the fireside. The beekeeping traditions of Samburu communities are centuries old, and the honey, if you encounter it in its raw form, it is unlike anything available in a supermarket.

Reteti is East Africa's first community-owned elephant sanctuary — a landmark conservation project that places Samburu communities at the centre of wildlife protection rather than on its margins.

Today's visit takes you into the sanctuary to witness the rescue and rehabilitation of orphaned elephant calves. The keepers, local men and women who have chosen this work, demonstrate what becomes possible when communities have genuine ownership over the wildlife that shares their land.

This is the visit that guests remember longest.

Depart Samburu and travel south, arriving in Nairobi in time for lunch. The afternoon and evening are at your own pace, a final opportunity to visit the Sarit Centre, explore Nairobi's restaurant scene, or simply rest before the Mara.

Morning Subject to flight time, a visit to the Giraffe Centre... Nairobi's celebrated conservation project for the endangered Rothschild giraffe, may be scheduled before departure.

Wilson Airstrip A scenic light aircraft flight into the Masai Mara. From the air, the transition from city to wilderness is immediate and startling. The Mara is the northern continuation of the Serengeti ecosystem: a landscape of rolling grass plains, wide river systems, and sky that seems to extend forever.

Lunch at camp, then your first afternoon game drive across the reserve.

A full day in the reserve. Morning and afternoon game drives across the iconic Mara plains, riverbanks, and mixed woodland, tracking elephant herds, monitoring the big cats, watching giraffe move through the acacia in that unhurried way they have.

Morning Visit the Olmalaika Trust, an organisation dedicated to the safety, education, and holistic development of children aged 0–12 in the Mara region. The work here is unglamorous and essential.

Evening Join host Bena Roberts for a fireside conversation. Responsible travel, community impact, the questions that arise when privilege meets need — this is the kind of conversation that rarely happens on a standard safari, and the kind that tends to continue for years afterward.

A final breakfast in the bush. Take your time. The Mara does not hurry anyone.

A morning flight returns you to Nairobi's Wilson Airport. A reserved day room gives you space to refresh, repack, and decompress before your evening transfer to Jomo Kenyatta International for your departure.

You will not leave Kenya the person who arrived.