It’s 11pm and I’m exhausted but just can’t sleep. In London it’s normally drunks and ambulances that break my slumber. Here in Kenya it’s chomping. Tucked up beneath swathes of muslin in my four-poster, all I can hear is the munching of zebras on the savannah, followed by the eerie “whooooop” of a hyena, and then a sound that no visitor to this patch of wilderness would have heard until recently: the roar of lions.
Of all the African countries, Kenya is probably the best known for its safaris. It is from here that the Swahili word kusafiri, meaning to travel, entered our lexicon to describe the extensive ego-driven trips of hunters to “bag” the giants of our planet: elephants sporting the world’s biggest tusks, lions with beatific manes, rhinos whose horns mirrored the priapic ambitions of the men who’d come to cull them.
Although the country was the first on the continent to ban hunting, in 1977, today its wildlife is under greater threat than ever before. It’s not only poaching that’s responsible for this decline, but development. In 50 years, the country’s population has grown four-fold to 55 million – and, to feed it, there are now herds of cattle, goats and sheep that compete with wildlife for pasture. Anyone who sees an elephant these days is pretty likely to see a goat, too. Those who spot a vegetable patch might – if they’re around in the dark, as David Attenborough was while shooting Planet Earth – witness elephants sniffing out a sweet-smelling field of tomatoes, until the animals are chased off by a night watchman bearing blazing sticks, spears or, in the worst case, guns.
In the new Angama Amboseli camp, where I’m trying to sleep, the wild sounds are particularly thrilling because, when it opened in November 2023, wildlife rangers hadn’t seen many lions around here for years. When there’s a population of about 20,000 people living in greater Kimana area, large cow-eating cats aren’t exactly welcome, explains Craig Millar, chief operating officer of Big Life, which helps communities manage about 2.5 million acres of land in this southern Kenyan region. Before the NGO worked with locals, “about 108 lions were killed between 2001 and 2006, and, in one year, 31 lions were killed on one group ranch alone. In the early ’00s pesticide poisoning of lions was so bad that we estimated there were only about 15 or 20 left.”
Often when pastoralists were formally given title deeds, wildlife was not considered in their land-use plan. So, little by little, the pathways that elephants had used for centuries started to get blocked by fields, roads and fences, and conflicts between man and beast increased. When Big Life came in to work with communities, the sanctuary ranger Johnson Salash tells me, conservation started to improve. Instead of killing lions to prove their manhood, warriors were encouraged to take part in the Masaai Games – like the Olympics, with sports such as spear throwing and jumping. Electric fences were erected in key areas near tomato farms, to keep wildlife out, and a protected corridor set aside so elephants could safely migrate. And in 2023, in the 5,700-acre Kimana Sanctuary, a smart little 10-suite lodge was created to bring funding, jobs and philanthropic visitors to the area.
The design of the camp, like that of Angama’s other property, in the Maasai Mara, is Kenyan and contemporary. Clean-lined spaces, plastered in elephant grey and roofed in khaki canvas, are set out amid a thicket of luminous yellow-barked acacia, with views looking south towards Mount Kilimanjaro. A pool invites wallows at midday and, from the colourfully adorned and curvaceous living area, guests can watch giraffes while feasting on fresh salads, or sip wine as they listen to the soul-nourishing sounds of a chorus of Maasai warriors.
Wonderfully, because there is only one camp in the sanctuary, those staying have it to themselves. Yes, there’s a town close by, so the hoot of an owl might occasionally be followed by the hoot of a bus. But there was more than enough space for me to walk with Salash by day, learning about wildlife (and, soberingly, stopping to examine the bones of Tolstoy, the legendary elephant bull who died here in 2022, having been speared on nearby farmland while raiding crops); then, at night, to go out with a spotlight, watching cute genets and acrobatic bushbabies and listening to a pair of honeymooning lions groan languorously.
In three days I left the sanctuary just once – to drive to Amboseli National Park in an attempt to see the last 20 or so super tusker elephants left on earth. Then, having successfully imprinted my camera and brain with memories of these beasts ambling alongside the busy park roads, I was grateful to head back to the camp’s peace. As Nicky Fitzgerald, one of its founders, so eloquently put it: “They’re the closest things to mammoths we have left – so I’m glad you saw them. But equally, I’m glad you could return to this quiet little jewel.”
If you’re someone like me, who finds spiritual respite in the wilderness, you’re guaranteed to feel good in the place I stopped at next: Samburuland. The northerly region of Kenya is known for its wide, dry expanses of bush, and the purply-blue peaks of ancient mountains that knife into the searing African skies. Walk here and you immediately breathe more easily. Talk to its people and your heart, and smile, expand.
Although Kalepo Camp is in the middle of what most people would regard as nowhere, it has, for centuries, been the territory through which the Nilotic cattle-herding Samburu people have passed. Sometimes they’ve stayed, bending wooden poles to make rounded temporary homes in villages known as manyattas, around which they weave thorny bushes to protect livestock. Then they move on – to new pastures, higher ground or distant river beds to dig wells.
When Rob and Storm Mason came to this vast region with Ian Craig, of the well-known Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, to investigate opening a camp to help fund the community-based Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), there was very little wildlife above the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, and hardcore poaching. To protect the last wild-roaming black rhino in Kenya, Craig airlifted it from here in 1996. As recently as 2020, dozens of elephants were shot for ivory.
But wanting what Storm calls “a legacy, and to do something to protect this incredible area”, the pair decided to give it a go. In 2019, having liaised for 18 months with local Samburu elders, they got agreement from the community to use 460,000 acres of land. In 2020 they opened their exclusive-use safari house, Kalepo, which sleeps up to 16 people.
Looking out from their elegant open-sided living space over a river bed pooled with water and dotted with trees, it’s obvious why this charismatic South African couple wanted to make their home here. The 400-million-year-old weathered rocks of the Mathews Range shimmer into the cornflower-blue skies. Behind us the giant iron-rich boulders of the sacred Mount Kimaning glint like copper in the dusk light. And around the sand paths that snake between the camp’s five spacious tents, glossy, sweet-smelling greenery filters the air that’s aflutter with birds and butterflies.
Although the duo hope that, one day, big wildlife will return – with the cooperation of the NRT rangers who now patrol here, and buy-in from the community, up to 50 of whom are now employed seasonally at Kalepo – this is not yet a place to see game. Rather it’s somewhere to spend days out, after breakfasts of exotic fruit and orange-yolked eggs, soaking in the wild, raw expanse. Because the camp can only be taken over by a single group, activities are created according to visitors’ fancies. So we walked through wide valleys, examining weird seeds in arm-length pods and spotting giant eagle owls with luminous pink eyelids. We stroked towering newtonia trees, whose scars bore witness to centuries of passing elephants. We sat with our feet cooling in the river, drinking lime-scented dawa cocktails and eating warm cashews below stars so thick and clear that their reflections flittered like fireflies on the water. And, as the slither of a new moon rose into the crisp midnight-blue skies, we feasted on fresh Ottolenghi-style fire-cooked food – much of it grown in Rob and Storm’s prolific fruit and veg garden.
Throughout the stay we were accompanied not just by the conservationist couple – who have run properties including an Oberoi hotel in India and a wealthy philanthropist’s safari camp in Laikipia – but the often hilarious and energetic Samburu staff. Before this camp was built here, explain the camp’s warrior guides Daniel Galgoroule and Joel Loltienya, their opportunities were minimal. Both are from big traditional families – Loltienya is one of 21 children. So their life paths were pretty set: having gone through five Samburu warrior ceremonies, they were expected to find a wife or two and raise some livestock.
When they show us around the clinic supported by the camp, the agave farm it’s established to give women an alternative income stream, and the school it’s helped rebuild with upgraded kitchens, solar power, desks, books, food and educational supplies, the warriors’ grins are proof of the pride they feel. “I was the only one to go to school in my family,” says Loltienya, “and our classroom was under that tree. Now look at what the children have.” While, pre-camp, there were only 30 students, mainly boys, now there is a mixed group of 60, and there are desks. “My sisters had to stay at home, to cook and take care of children,” he adds. “Now, maybe if I have a daughter, she could be a doctor or a teacher. It’s changing.”
What tourism won’t change is the Samburu’s rich culture. If guests do go into the villages, by invitation, it’s with the Samburu: to watch spears and knives being made by the wandering blacksmiths whose clan has traditionally traversed these northern parts, melting steel bars over little charcoal fires. Or to visit manyattas and chat to women inside their cool beehive-shaped huts. Or to herd sheep with little boys with shy faces and big eyes. Or, if they’re lucky, to witness a training session for the Warrior Games where, as well as spear and club throwing, the young men enjoy a bit of peacocking, some strutting in striped socks inspired by footballing heroes, others preening bare-chested in multicoloured shukas, or crowned with feathered Mohican-style headdresses.
That night, as I lay in my linen-clad, fan-cooled bed, listening to hooting owls and the chatter of squirrels, the scale of what the Masons are working to achieve here hit home. Every adult guest, every night, pays $150 to the community. In exchange, the visitors get to witness the difference – to people and planet – that money can make. As Storm said: “What we always hear about Africa is the negative. We want to prove that, if you want to make things better, you can. To show that this beautiful continent isn’t all doom and gloom. It’s about hope.”
Hope is the one thing that the founders of my next stop-off, Wild Hill, have in spades. Tarquin Wood was a third-generation, proudly Kenyan, farmer trying to grow beans in what is now part of the northern Mara Conservancies, when he and his wife, Lippa, began to realise that the area’s long-term future wasn’t sustainable unless they could all find a better use for their land – and better protection for its wildlife.
The degradation of the area had been happening for a while. Once, these remote grasslands were the domain of small families of Maasai pastoralists who moved seasonally with the rains. But as more Kenyans started to buy cattle, pressure on pastures increased and care of the soil declined. Forests were cut down for charcoal. The relationship between man and wildlife became ever more fractious.
In 2012 it came to a head when, in one week, five elephants were speared to death while raiding villagers’ crops, then three lions were -poisoned in retaliation for killing Maasai cows. Because the -villagers reaped no benefit from the wildlife, they regarded it as a pest. And until that changed, this vast area of grassland and its creatures were doomed. So, “slightly terrified” about how to approach the problem, “and totally naive about the money it would take”, admits Lippa, they took the step to change from farmers to conservationists.
First came rewilding their farm, and transforming their thatched house into a safari camp, Wild Lodge. Next was raising capital – from grants, then from creating homes for philanthropists on their old farm to underwrite the lease of the Enonkishu Conservancy. They have been so successful at acquiring funds for the former cattle-herding community – alongside creating a nursery and beehives, managing grazing lands, opening nature clubs and improving schools and libraries – that a neighbouring population has joined their conservation plan.
With 45,000 acres of the northern Mara Conservancies set aside for wildlife and controlled cattle grazing, in July 2024 the couple, partnering with the philanthropic Sievwright family, launched their most ambitious project: Wild Hill, a private-use villa on a 400-acre hillside. As their first guest, I can attest that there are few more dramatic views over the vast grasslands of southern Kenya than from the open-plan, stone-walled living room and each of its five suites.
Like other smart bush houses in Kenya, such as Arijiju, Sirai and Segera, Wild Hill was designed not only for wildlife lovers but for families wanting an all-round holiday. The dramatic interiors are furnished with Omani mirrors, metal cow heads, Zanzibar-style doors, faded Persian-style carpets and South African beaded chandeliers. A characterful bar adjoins a cavernous living space leading to a library, a pool room and, beyond that, a gym with bush views. Alongside it is a deck for morning yoga classes and an infinity pool for cool sundowners, a big spa and an ice pool. There’s even a lurid green pickleball court for those mad enough to want to play in the searing sun.
The ideal is, the Woods say, that well-heeled travellers who dream of positive change might stay for a week and leave inspired. Several of Wild Lodge’s guests have already made a substantial difference, donating some of the 30,000 trees planted by local women – led by the charismatic Jane Nashipae – and funds to upgrade classrooms, bathroom blocks and libraries at remote schools.
Staying here offers significant benefits too. Unlike Maasai Mara, which attracts about 100,000 visitors a year, this part of Kenya has very few tourists. But because of the way this new conservation model has been set up, the majority of those who do come share the owners’ appetite for preservation. As Saleno Mparru, a guard in the nearby rhino sanctuary, said to me on my final day: “We like guests because, when you come, we have hope that these magnificent creatures won’t die out, won’t go extinct. And we have hope that our lives, too, will be better.” A thought that was a memorable little souvenir to take home.
The Luxury Safari Company can arrange 10 days in Kenya, including three nights at Angama Amboseli, three at Kalepo Camp and three at Wild Hill, full board, with all flights, transfers and activities, from £20,500 per person based on a family of four.