Ol Malo Nomad

Fit enough to be on your feet or in the saddle for a morning over rough country, day after day. Days start at first light and the travelling is done by late lunch, when you reach the next camp, so the afternoons are for a walk with the Samburu guides, a swim in a river or nothing at all. No distance is fixed: the camels set the pace and the route is built around the party, so a strong walking group and a family of mixed ages do not cover the same ground. It is not a trip for anyone with limited mobility.

Where the far country is wanted, the helicopter does the long legs, which is how Lake Turkana or the Rift Valley fit into a few days rather than a week. Tell us honestly how everyone walks and rides and we will shape the days to the weakest legs, not the strongest.

Slow, close and quiet. A camel train carries the whole camp ahead of you, while a smaller team walks with the party carrying water and taking anyone who wants to ride, so a camel day is as much walking beside them as sitting on one. Game that runs from a vehicle tends to hold its ground for a horse or a camel, which is the point: you come up on elephant and Grevy's zebra at a distance a car never manages.

The horse days want experience. The ranch rides its own horses, but you are riding through wild country for hours with no arena to fall back on, so we would only put confident riders on the horse legs, and the rider weight limit is 90 kilograms. Non-riders are not left out: the same route runs on foot or by camel, and a party can mix the three.

Simple, and honest about it. Four twin tents, each with two camp beds or sleeping rolls made up with proper cotton linen and duvets, and the flaps roll right back for the stars. The guides have the camp up before you arrive, and guests who want to are welcome to pitch in with the fire and the chairs. Washing is a hot bucket shower in a shared bush bathroom, or a river where there is one, and the loos are shared too. There is no running water and no wifi, and we have not confirmed phone signal along the route, so assume none.

Meals are cooked over the fire and eaten outside. If that description reads as the whole point, this is your camp; if it reads as a list of things missing, the lodge where the camp begins, with its stone cottages and proper bathrooms, is the answer, and we would rather send you there.

Five and over is the guidance we work to. Younger children are not ruled out in principle, but the camp's own representatives put five as the age where it starts to work, because everyone travels the same way, on foot, on a camel or on a horse, and the mornings are long for small legs. A four-year-old on a camel until lunch is a memory for the parents and an ordeal for the child.

For a family with young children who want the Francombes' ranch, the house or the lodge with a night in the Treehouse gives the sleeping-out thrill with a bath at the end of it, and the older children can still ride out for a day. Tell us the ages and we will say plainly which shape of trip fits.

It cannot be booked on its own. The camp starts and finishes at Ol Malo Lodge, for one party only and for at least two nights, and it is sold with lodge nights around it. We would usually build two or three nights under canvas with three or four at the lodge or the house either side, so the trip has a bath at both ends. The ranch closes in April, May and November, and the camp closes with it.

Getting there is getting to the ranch: a private charter from Nairobi's Wilson Airport to the ranch's own airstrip, typically a Cessna Caravan or a Pilatus PC-12, or a scheduled flight to Loisaba, about an hour, and 45 to 50 minutes by road from there. Soft bags only, 15 kilograms a person on the scheduled services, which suits a camp where a camel is carrying your luggage anyway.

It is, and canvas changes the practical side rather than the official one. TravelHealthPro, the UK's official travel health advice, and the American CDC both class every part of Kenya below 2,500 metres as malaria risk all year, game country included, and recommend antimalarial tablets for it; the only exceptions are the highlands above that height and the centre of Nairobi. The ranch stands at about 1,600 metres and the country the camp moves through sits below the line as well.

We are travel planners, not medical professionals, and we do not advise on medication. What suits you, and what is right for a child on the trip, is a question for your own doctor or a travel clinic before you go. The part that is ours to say is about the tents: the flaps roll back for the stars, which also lets the dusk in, so long sleeves and repellent by the fire are worth more here than at a lodge.