Kenya · Budget · Big Time pick
A 5-day budget safari through the Maasai Mara, Lake Nakuru and Lake Naivasha. Budget nights at Miti Mingi Eco Camp (Maasai Mara), Buraha Zenoni (Lake Nakuru) and Leisure Apex (Lake Naivasha).
Price per person
Places as named in the journey title. Nights in each are set out in your itinerary.
Starts in Nairobi · finishes in Nairobi
The route, days and named stays are as planned. What is included at each stop, from food, park fees and drinking water to room types, permits and border arrangements, and any camp or lodge not named here, is set out in your written quotation. Game drives on travel days depend on arrival and departure times, timings can change with road and park conditions, and wildlife sightings are never guaranteed. Photographs illustrate each day’s destination; they are not pictures of a particular departure.
Nairobi → Maasai Mara
The 4×4 Land Cruiser leaves Nairobi in the morning for the long drive to the Maasai Mara. Arriving at Miti Mingi Eco Camp, there is time to settle in before the first game drive of the trip, timed around your arrival, when it becomes clear why the Mara holds such a place in safari lore. Even on a first afternoon, the reserve tends to deliver its classic scenes: elephants moving across the grass, giraffes browsing the acacias and, with luck, a pride of lions waiting for the heat to pass.
Maasai Mara
A full day in the Mara is a chance to see how the reserve works as well as what lives in it. Part of the Maasai Mara National Reserve, the Mara Triangle, is managed by the Mara Conservancy, which employs community scouts along the Siria Escarpment to manage the reserve’s border. In the migration season the Conservancy counts around 1.2 million wildebeest moving with zebra, eland and Thomson’s gazelle; outside it, the reserve’s own residents fill the plains. Either way, a full day allows long, unhurried sightings.
Maasai Mara → Lake Nakuru
Today the Land Cruiser carries you from the Mara to Lake Nakuru, where the story of protection began with birds: in 1961 the southern tip of the lake became a sanctuary for flamingos and other waterbirds, and the protection soon grew to cover the whole lake. Flamingo numbers vary and cannot be promised on any given day, but the lake shore is always worth scanning. The night is at Buraha Zenoni, the property our catalogue names for Lake Nakuru.
Lake Nakuru → Lake Naivasha
Morning in Lake Nakuru National Park is rhino time. Kenya Wildlife Service describes the park as home to one of Kenya’s largest populations of black rhinos, protected inside an electric perimeter fence built in 1986, a landmark in Kenyan conservation at the time. Afterwards the journey continues the short way to Lake Naivasha, where Leisure Apex is the night’s stop and an evening by fresh water makes a gentle contrast with the alkaline lake of the morning.
Lake Naivasha → Nairobi
Lake Naivasha’s papyrus fringes and lakeside grassland are the two ecosystems the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute singles out as internationally important, and a quiet last morning by the water shows both, often with hippos grazing on the shore. Keep a respectful distance: hippos out of the water are unpredictable. The Land Cruiser then returns to Nairobi, closing a five-day loop that took in the reserve and two of the Rift Valley’s lakes.
Like the shape of these days? Tell us your dates and who is travelling, and our team will set out the stays, meals and inclusions in a written quotation.
Maasai Mara · Budget
Lake Nakuru · Budget
Lake Naivasha · Budget
Big Time pick
Maasai Mara · Lake Nakuru · Lake Naivasha · Amboseli
Budget nights at Miti Mingi Eco Camp (Maasai Mara), Buraha Zenoni (Lake Nakuru), Leisure Apex (Lake Naivasha) and Nyati Safari Camp (Amboseli).
Maasai Mara · Lake Nakuru · Lake Naivasha
Budget nights at Miti Mingi Eco Camp (Maasai Mara), Buraha Zenoni (Lake Nakuru) and Leisure Apex (Lake Naivasha).
Maasai Mara · Nakuru · Naivasha · Amboseli · Tsavo East
Budget nights at Miti Mingi Eco Camp (Maasai Mara), Buraha Zenoni (Lake Nakuru), Leisure Apex (Lake Naivasha) and Nyati Safari Camp (Amboseli), with camp or lodge stays at the other stops.
Tell us your dates, who is travelling and anything you would like to change. Our team will tell you what this journey can include.
