Moon’s Camp sits deep in the bush on the southern slopes of the Lolldaiga Hills, a private conservancy of ridges, valleys and cedar forest in Kenya’s Laikipia Highlands. The view runs from a waterhole to the snow on Mount Kenya beyond, and the elephant families arrive most mornings. Ed and Moon Hough founded the camp in 2019 and live on site with their children.
Very few new camps in Kenya have this much personality.
Guides host two game drives a day in the camp’s own safari vehicles, and head guide James Ntopai, a Samburu tracker who learned to read ground herding livestock on foot through northern Kenya, rides out with anyone who asks. Very few new camps in Kenya have this much personality. It comes from Ed, Moon, James and the team around them, and in almost every way it is what we look for in a camp.
The hills climb from 1,700 to 2,300 metres, folding into valleys, rocky outcrops and dry ground, with ancient Afromontane cedar forest along the higher ridges. Rock shelters in the cliffs hold prehistoric paintings, undisturbed. This is the northern foothill country of Mount Kenya, a corridor and elephant dispersal zone running from the mountain’s forests to the arid rangelands of Samburu.
Leopards are unusually dense across these hills.
Lion, elephant and buffalo range through the valleys, though there are no rhino. Leopards are unusually dense across these hills. Reticulated giraffe are resident here, as are gerenuk and wild dog, along with the smaller nocturnal hunters: striped hyena, aardwolf and bat-eared fox. Because Lolldaiga is a private conservancy rather than a national park, walking, night drives and off-road driving are all permitted.
Kenya has seen a run of new lodges open in recent years, most of them large, highly polished and built by big groups. Moon’s Camp is the other kind. Moon spent a year learning traditional cob building so that nothing here needed cement, and 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. 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.
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 from a camp where the owners’ own children are growing up: two family tents, meals for younger appetites, tracking lessons and nature walks. Ed and Moon pledge the camp’s net profits to community work, wildlife research and conservation, most of the staff come from within nine miles of the hills, and Kids On Safari brings local children into the bush. What a page cannot show is the warmth of the people running it, and for anyone who values that above polish, we would put Moon’s Camp among the finest choices in Kenya.
accommodation
Six walk-in canvas tents stand on wooden platforms, four of them configured as doubles or twins and two of them family tents, sleeping sixteen guests in all. Each has an en-suite bathroom with a carved wooden basin and a brass bucket shower, a private veranda angled at the waterhole, and beds dressed for cold nights.
activities
Two guided game drives a day, night drives, walking safaris with an armed ranger, kayaking on the hill dams, horse riding, rock-art caves, fly-camping and visits with Maasai and Samburu families. Private conservancy rules allow walking, night drives and off-road driving. Guests who like old cars can take a restored Series Land Rover out themselves.
conservation
Kids On Safari hosts children from neighbouring communities in the conservancy. Net profits from Moon's Camp fund community projects, research and conservation in the Laikipia Highlands, staff are recruited locally, and an artist-in-residence programme brings painters to record the hills.
Get in touch and let’s start the conversation. An initial consultation helps us understand what you’re looking for, whether that’s specific experiences, luxury touches, or marking a special occasion, and from there we’ll guide you through what’s possible so you can decide if we’re the right fit.
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Most guests fly. Scheduled light aircraft leave Nairobi's Wilson airport for Nanyuki, about an hour in the air, and from there it is a drive north into the conservancy. Lolldaiga has its own airstrip a good deal closer to camp, roughly an hour away by road, and we can arrange a private charter straight onto it, typically a Cessna Caravan or a Pilatus PC-12. Transfers from that airstrip, or from the conservancy's main gate, are included in the stay.
The scheduled aircraft take soft bags only, fifteen kilograms a person including hand luggage, so pack a duffel rather than a hard case. If you would rather watch the country change on the way up, the drive from Nairobi takes around four hours and we can build it in as a private road transfer instead.
Treat it as a malaria risk area rather than a malaria-free one. The camp sits between roughly 1,700 and 2,300 metres in the Lolldaiga Hills and the cold nights hold mosquito numbers down, but both TravelHealthPro, the UK's official travel health service, and the CDC draw the line at 2,500 metres. Below that they class Kenya as a malaria area, game parks and conservancies included, and both list antimalarial tablets among their recommendations for it.
We are travel planners rather than medical people, so that decision sits with you and your doctor or a travel clinic, and the guidance is reviewed often enough to be worth checking close to departure. Whatever you settle on, the ordinary care against bites is worth taking once the light goes: long sleeves in the evening and repellent on any skin left showing.
Yes, and unusually so. Ed and Moon Hough run the camp themselves and live on site with their own children, and it takes children of all ages rather than setting a minimum. There are two family tents, the second opened in August 2026 alongside a new pool, and a children's menu that can be ordered daily and carried out on the afternoon activity.
Being a private conservancy rather than a national park helps too, because a day can be cut to fit a short attention span: an hour at the waterhole, a walk, a swim, a drive of whatever length suits. Tell us the ages when you enquire and we will set the rooming and the pace of the days around them.
There is wifi in the mess tent, on at all times, which is enough for messages, email and sending photographs home. Each tent has solar power for the lights and for charging cameras and phones.
Mobile signal across the hills is patchy and not worth planning around. If you need to be reachable at a set time while you are there, tell us before you travel and we will arrange it with the camp.
High and dry, so warm days meet genuinely cold mornings and nights the whole year round, which is what the fire in camp is for. The long rains fall roughly from March to May and the short rains in November, greening the hills and softening the tracks, while the months between them stay clear and dusty.
Pack warm layers for the early starts and the evenings, neutral colours and proper sun protection for the middle of the day, and closed shoes with grip for the walking. Swimwear is worth having for the pool, and binoculars earn their place at a camp built around a waterhole.
The camp is open all year and the dry stretches are the pick, from late June to October and again from December to February. Skies are clear, the ground is firm underfoot for walking, and animals draw in to the waterholes, including the one below camp.
The green weeks after the rains are quieter and the hills look their best, with the birding at its strongest and young animals about. Tracks soften, so a green season stay leans more on the drives than the longer walks. There is no migration to time here, which is part of the point: Lolldaiga is private ground with very few beds spread across its hills and valleys, so it never has a busy month in the way the Mara does.
rated five stars by our clients
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our approach
Every journey starts with a conversation. We take the time to understand your vision before we start planning.
Whether by phone or in person, we work with you directly to shape something that is considered, personal, and expertly delivered.
