Offbeat Mara

By light aircraft. Scheduled services leave Nairobi's Wilson airport for Mara North airstrip, the strip that serves the conservancy, and the sector runs around forty five to fifty minutes, longer when the aircraft calls at another Mara strip first. From the strip it is a short drive to the camp on the Olare Orok. We can also put on a private charter, usually a Cessna Caravan or a Pilatus PC-12, which goes direct and leaves on your timing rather than the airline's.

The aircraft take soft bags only, fifteen kilograms a person including hand luggage and camera gear, so a duffel rather than a hard case. Driving from Nairobi is possible and takes the better part of a day.

Mara North is private land leased from its Maasai landowners, and the rules inside it are set by the conservancy rather than by the national reserve. In practice that means far fewer vehicles at a sighting, permission to drive off the track to follow something properly, night drives after dark, and walking with a guide. None of those are allowed inside the Maasai Mara National Reserve itself.

The reserve is still worth a day for its sheer density of animals and for the river crossings in season, and we build both into a stay rather than choosing between them.

Yes. The UK's official travel health service, TravelHealthPro, and the American CDC both treat the whole of Kenya below 2,500 metres as a malaria area, and both name the game reserves and conservancies specifically. Mara North sits at roughly 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 either sets apart are central Nairobi and the highlands above 2,500 metres.

We do not make medical recommendations. We are travel planners, not doctors. Which tablets are right for you, whether they suit your own health or anyone else's in the party, and what is appropriate for a child, is a conversation between you and your doctor or a travel clinic. The practical side we can speak to is not medical: cover arms and legs from late afternoon and keep repellent to hand.

The Mara is high ground, so it runs warmer and drier by day than people expect and considerably colder at dawn than they pack for. Afternoons settle in the middle twenties, nights fall to around eleven or twelve degrees, and an open vehicle at first light takes several degrees off that again. The long rains fall from about March into May, April the wettest, and the short rains come in November and December, usually as an afternoon storm rather than a lost 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 light. Keep it inside the fifteen kilogram soft bag allowance on the flight in.

The herds usually cross into the Mara from July and stay into October, and the crossings people picture are concentrated in August and September. Mara North sits on the route north of the reserve, so the herds move through the conservancy as well as the reserve, and in a good year the camp has them on its doorstep.

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 into the strongest part of the window and treat the crossing as something you have a good chance of seeing rather than a fixture. Out of season the conservancy holds its resident game year round, which is much of its appeal.