10:00 AM — The group convenes at the Four Points Sheraton, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Introductions are made over coffee. Bena conducts a pre-departure briefing. These are the first moments you spend with women who have, like you, chosen a different kind of travel.

11:30 AM — Transfer to the Nairobi Giraffe Centre, where Rothschild's giraffes — among the rarest subspecies on earth — can be fed from a raised platform at eye level. It is not a sophisticated experience. It is simply an excellent one. Allow approximately one hour.

Lunch — A relaxed meal at a local Nairobi restaurant. Kenyan food. No itinerary pressure.

Afternoon — A three-hour drive southwest to Lake Nakuru National Park, crossing the floor of the Great Rift Valley. The geological scale of the Rift is difficult to prepare for. Stop at the rim viewpoints. Photographs rarely do it justice, but take them anyway.

Evening — Check into Lion Hill Lodge, a four-star property situated within the park boundary. Sundowners on the terrace. Dinner as the African night settles in. The wildlife begins at dawn.

Dawn — The Kenyan early morning has a quality that is hard to name. The air is still cold. The light arrives at a low angle through the acacia. The earth smells of rain and red dust. Lake Nakuru holds a nationally significant population of both black and white rhinos, and the morning game drive is where you may encounter them at close range, unhurried and enormous against the flat lakeshore.

Also possible — Lions in the fever tree woodland, leopards resting on branches above the track, and, depending on the season, the famous flamingo congregations that rim the alkaline waters in bands of deep pink.

Midday — Return to Lion Hill Lodge. The Active Luxury principle in practice: breakfast, a swim if you choose, time to journal or simply sit.

Late Afternoon — A second game drive as the light turns gold. The late afternoon in a national park is different from the morning — quieter, longer shadows, animals moving toward water. A photographer's hour.

Evening — Dinner at the lodge. Conversation by the fire. Rest.

After Breakfast — The convoy departs for the Masai Mara: a 4.5-hour drive across one of Africa's most varied overland routes. Maasai boma settlements, forested highland ridges, the vast open floor of the Rift — the landscape changes in chapters. Stops are made for photographs, for roadside fruit sellers, for the unhurried pleasure of watching Kenya unfold.

Entering the Reserve — An en route game drive as the group crosses into the Mara ecosystem. Something changes at that boundary. The horizon extends. The sky broadens. Wildlife appears without warning in the grass. Those who have been to the Mara before describe the feeling; those arriving for the first time simply go quiet.

Camp Arrival — Mara Bush Camp occupies a riverbank position of unusual quality: tented suites with proper beds and en-suite facilities, solar-powered, no-plastics throughout, Maasai staff employed at fair wages. It holds a Gold Eco-rating — not a marketing designation but a verified certification. This is where you will spend the next four nights.

Morning — A guided bush walk with Maasai rangers: two to three hours on foot in the reserve. No vehicle. No elevated position. Just the ground as the wildlife experiences it. Rangers teach the group to read tracks, identify bird species by call, distinguish between safe and dangerous approaches, and move through the landscape without disturbing it. Guests return to camp with a different relationship to the bush than they left with.

Late Morning — A one-hour photography session with the camp's resident photographer. The focus is practical: how light behaves in the African midday, how to compose a frame that tells a story rather than simply records a moment, how to use a smartphone as effectively as a professional camera. The skills learnt here will improve every photograph taken for the remainder of the trip.

Afternoon — Game drive across the Mara plains. Cheetah, elephant, giraffe, the possibility of leopard in the riverine forest. The new photography eye is already working.

Evening — Dinner at the fire. The sound of the bush arrives at night: hippos from the river, nightjars, distant lion.

Morning — A visit to a local primary school in the Mara ecosystem. Children attend classes in buildings with earthen floors; their aspiration has no ceiling. This is not a staged cultural encounter. The group participates in a tree-planting exercise — roughly one hour — contributing directly to a reforestation scheme. Each tree planted is registered to the individual who planted it. The Plastics-for-Books programme, which converts recovered plastic waste into funding for school libraries, is explained by teachers who run it.

Afternoon — A game drive back toward camp, or time at rest. The day carries weight; space is offered to hold it.

Evening — A Reiki circle at the campfire. Guided, unhurried, and optional in the truest sense. Guests who arrive sceptical often leave having experienced something they cannot easily describe. The African night sky forms the ceiling.

Full Day — Extended game drives across the Mara's iconic open plains. The reserve's scale becomes apparent when you spend a full day within it: the corridors between rivers, the kopjes where predators survey their territory, the woodland edges where elephants move between feeding grounds. Maasai guide knowledge — of animal behaviour, of ecological relationships, of the living stories embedded in this landscape — is the thing that distinguishes a game drive from an education.

Picnic breakfast in the field, under a thorn tree, with the plains extending in every direction.

Late Afternoon — As the sun drops toward the western Mara horizon, Maasai elders perform a traditional closing blessing for the group. Prayers for safe passage, for abundance, for the preservation of what has been witnessed. This is not organised for tourists. It is offered as a genuine ritual by people for whom such ceremonies carry real meaning. Stand in the circle. Receive it.

Evening — A final dinner at Mara Bush Camp. The conversation tends to run late.

Morning — No alarm. A last breakfast on the terrace, watching the Mara River. Pack at whatever pace suits. Say goodbye to staff who have, over the course of a week, become familiar. These are not goodbyes without feeling.

Late Morning — A scenic one-hour flight from the Mara airstrip to Wilson Airport, Nairobi. From altitude, the reserve reveals its full scale: the river systems threading through grassland, the acacia ridgelines, the immensity of the plains. It is the best possible farewell.

Afternoon — Transfer to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Those wishing to extend their stay — toward Mombasa's coast, or further time in Nairobi — can be assisted with arrangements.

Kenya changes people. It does so quietly, without announcement. You will notice it on the flight home.