A split fig tree stands watch over Leopard Hill, the kind of landmark the local Maasai once used as a shrine and a lookout for tracking lions. Baboons occupy its branches and announce the morning. Below, in the camp’s six tents, a motorised canvas roof slides back at the press of a button, and the space above the bed opens to the sky. Only a mosquito net separates the pillow from the stars.
Elephants wallow in the mud and giraffes stand at the shallows.
The camp sits in a valley of old acacias in the Mara Naboisho Conservancy, a community-owned block of savannah bordering Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve. The waterholes nearby hold the day’s traffic. Elephants wallow in the mud and giraffes stand at the shallows. Warthogs shuffle between them, and waterbuck and impala drift through in the afternoon light.
Vehicle numbers here are capped, cattle graze on a rotation agreed with the landowners, and the camps are few and far apart. What that restraint buys is freedom. Night drives are permitted, walking safaris too, and a vehicle may leave the track to follow a hunting cheetah across the grass, none of it possible inside the neighbouring national reserve.
Lions, leopards and cheetahs are the daily business.
Guiding is in the hands of Maasai from the surrounding communities. Lions, leopards and cheetahs are the daily business. Spotted hyenas and jackals fill the gaps, with the occasional wild dog, serval or African wildcat. Walks go out on foot with an armed ranger alongside, and an eleven-kilometre route to a neighbouring camp brings topi, zebra and giraffe within easy view.
It began at a fire in 1998, in a conversation between Svein Wilhelmsen, a Norwegian conservationist, and Motinka Ole Taek, a Maasai leader. Leopard Hill, opened in 2018, is among the newer camps to come from the arrangement they made under Basecamp Explorer. The conservancy covers roughly 200 square kilometres of grassland and acacia country on the north-eastern edge of the Maasai Mara, leased from the more than 500 Maasai families who own it. Tourism revenue pays for the lease, and the land stays in Maasai hands.
The tents are round, echoing the shape of a Maasai manyatta, and stand on raised timber decks, each with a fire pit and a veranda facing the grass. Bathrooms open onto the grassland, twin vanities inside and a shower out under the sky. Everything else is pared back to polished timber, canvas and handwoven textiles. The lounge tent has a stone-and-brick fireplace and an espresso station guests help themselves to, and the cooking is Kenyan produce with an Italian accent, much of it wood-fired, served at individual tables or under lanterns in the bush.
After dark, a spotlit drive picks out aardwolf, serval and hyenas at their hunting.
The first drive leaves before sunrise, and breakfast is unpacked out on the plains. Afternoons are given to a walk. After dark, a spotlit drive picks out aardwolf, serval and hyenas at their hunting. The hill above camp serves as the sundowner point, with Naboisho’s grassland running to the horizon and the light going gold over the acacias. Balloon flights over the Mara can be arranged from camp. A dedicated wellbeing space offers massage, and yoga mats are provided in each tent for anyone who wants the deck at dawn.
What the camp earns travels further than the lease payments. In the Pardamat Conservation Area, the Wildlife Tourism College of Maasai Mara opened in April 2024 and trains young Kenyans in conservation science and hospitality. Closer to hand, beadwork made by Maasai women through a fair-trade workshop is sold through the camps. Children are welcome from age seven, walking safaris from twelve, and early dinners are served for the youngest at six.
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accommodation
Six tents in all. Four are deluxe doubles or twins, a honeymoon tent sits at the far end of camp with its own lounge, and a family tent holds two bedrooms on a single deck. Every one is round and raised on a timber platform, with a motorised roof above the bed, indoor and outdoor showers, and a private veranda facing the grass.
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activities
Game drives run morning, afternoon and after dark in open 4x4s, with off-road tracking of cats permitted because Naboisho is a conservancy rather than reserve land. Walking safaris go out with Maasai guides and an armed ranger. Balloon flights, bush breakfasts, sundowners on the hill, and visits to Maasai homesteads round out the days.
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conservation
More than 90,000 trees have been planted around Naboisho to restore woodland, funded by the Basecamp Explorer Foundation. A fair-trade beadwork workshop gives Maasai women independent income, and operations follow The Long Run's conservation, community, culture and commerce standards. Lease income is paid to landowning families monthly.
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