Moon’s Camp

Moon spent a year learning traditional cob building so that nothing here needed cement. The back-of-house buildings are clay, sand and straw. The guest tents stand on light wooden platforms that could be lifted away without leaving a mark on the ground beneath them. Inside, canvas walls give onto wrought-iron beds, hand-woven rugs and storage trunks made by Kenyan craftsmen, and the bathrooms hold carved wooden washbasins and brass bucket showers. Each tent faces the waterhole from its own veranda, and the whole camp runs off-grid on solar power.

Bread comes out of the oven each morning and cakes in the afternoon, all of it cooked on charcoal stoves rather than in a formal kitchen, the vegetables brought in from local growers. Guests eat together at one long table in the mess tent, among mismatched sofas and warm rugs, or wherever the day suggests: breakfast out in the bush, lunch spread on the plains, dinner beside the fire under a sky with no light pollution in it. The highland nights turn cold, and hot water bottles are tucked into the beds before anyone reaches them.

Fly-camping puts a mosquito dome in the woodland, with nothing between the beds and the stars.

Days take whatever shape suits. An armed ranger leads the walks through the valleys, and night drives pick out hyena and the smaller nocturnal hunters. There are dams in the hills to kayak, horses to ride, and caves to reach on foot for the rock art. Cultural visits go to Maasai and Samburu elders and to the women’s groups in the villages. Fly-camping puts a mosquito dome in the woodland, with nothing between the beds and the stars. Helicopters can be arranged for flights around Mount Kenya and on into the north.

Children of any age are welcome, which follows naturally from a camp where the owners’ own children are growing up. There is a family tent, meals cooked for younger appetites, tracking lessons and nature walks. Ed and Moon pledge the camp’s net profits to community work, wildlife research and conservation, and most of the staff come from within nine miles of the hills. Kids On Safari brings children from the surrounding communities into the bush, since livestock losses mean many of them first learn about wildlife as a threat rather than as something worth protecting.