Naibor Camp

Most guests fly. Scheduled services leave Nairobi's Wilson airport for Ol Kiombo, the airstrip that serves the Talek River, and the sector is about forty five minutes in the air, though the shuttle flights often touch down at another Mara strip on the way.

From Ol Kiombo it is a short drive along the river to the camp. We can also arrange a private charter, usually a Cessna Caravan or a Pilatus PC-12, which flies direct and leaves on your timing rather than the schedule's.

The light aircraft take soft bags only, fifteen kilograms a person including hand luggage and camera gear, so pack a duffel rather than a hard case. Driving up from Nairobi is possible and takes the better part of a day, coming into the reserve at Talek Gate.

Yes. Both the UK's official travel health service, TravelHealthPro, and the American CDC treat the whole of Kenya below 2,500 metres as a malaria area, and both name the game reserves specifically, so there is no ambiguity about the Mara.

The camp sits at around 1,500 to 1,900 metres, well inside that. TravelHealthPro rates the country high risk and recommends antimalarial tablets for it, and the CDC records transmission across all areas below that altitude.

The only parts of Kenya the two set apart are central Nairobi and the highlands above 2,500 metres. That guidance is reviewed and does change, so it is worth reading the current position rather than an old note.

We do not make medical recommendations, and we would not want to. We arrange travel; we are not doctors. Which tablets suit you, how they sit with anything else you take, and what is right for a child are questions for your own doctor or a travel clinic.

On the practical part, dusk is the hour that matters, so long sleeves, long trousers and repellent are worth the packing space.

Children of eight and over are welcome. Younger children are taken on request rather than as a matter of course, and the reason is worth understanding: the camp sits unfenced on the riverbank inside the reserve, with nothing between the tents and the wildlife, so a child needs an adult alongside at all times.

Children under twelve cannot join safari walks, which is a rule about walking in big game country rather than anything to do with the camp.

The camp puts on early dinners for children and can arrange child minding if you ask in advance. Tell us the ages when you enquire and we will build the days around them.

The Mara is high country, so it runs warmer and drier than people expect by day and a good deal colder at dawn than they pack for. Days usually settle in the middle twenties, nights fall to around eleven or twelve degrees, and a first light drive in an open vehicle feels colder still once you are moving.

The long rains fall from about March to May, April the wettest of them, and the short rains come in November and December, more often as an afternoon storm than a grey day.

Layers do the work. A base layer, a fleece and a windproof jacket you can shed by mid morning, with long trousers, a hat and sunglasses for the strong high altitude sun. Keep it all inside the fifteen kilogram soft bag allowance on the flights in.

The herds usually reach the Mara from July and stay into October, and the crossings people picture are concentrated in August and September. Naibor Camp stands on the Talek, which the herds cross as they push north and move between grazing, so a crossing can happen within reach of camp, though the Talek is less predictable than the Mara River itself.

Nobody can promise a crossing on a given day. The herds move on rain, grass and river levels rather than a calendar, so we plan your dates around the odds and treat a crossing as something you may well see, never as the thing you are paying for.