Four tents and a two-bedroom suite occupy a low ridge above the Olare Orok River, inside the private Mara North Conservancy. Every booking comes with its own vehicle and guide, so the day answers to nobody else. At night the resident Offbeat Pride roars up from the valley below, close enough to hear from bed.
A buffalo has been known to graze alongside a tent’s mesh wall.
From the verandas the ground falls away to the Olare Orok, more stream than river for much of the year, curling around a glade of ancient sycamore figs. Elephant browse the riverine thicket, bushbuck slip between the trunks, and impala hold the open ground beyond. A buffalo has been known to graze alongside a tent’s mesh wall. It chews through the quiet after dark, a few feet from the bed.
Mara North Conservancy is leased from more than 750 Maasai landowning families and run by a group of camps, which is why the rules differ from those inside the national reserve next door. A sighting is capped at five vehicles, and often there is only one. Guides can leave the road to follow a hunting cheetah, work after dark with a spotlight, and walk guests out on foot.
A sighting is capped at five vehicles, and often there is only one.
The guides here are silver-rated by the Kenya Professional Safari Guide Association, and several trained at the Koiyaki Guiding School nearby. David and Joseph have each worked with the camp for more than fifteen years, long enough to know the pride’s lionesses individually and to remember which cubs came from which mother. Bronze-rated spotters ride along, training as they go.
Tristan Voorspuy and his wife Lucinda started Offbeat Safaris in 1989 as a horseback safari operation. Piers Winkworth joined them in 2002 and helped assemble Mara North Conservancy in 2009, alongside Maasai landowners and a dozen tourism operators. He built Ndoto as a smaller, more private version of the camp he had opened a few years earlier on the same river, and opened it in September 2021. Piers remains owner and director of both. In 2023, Simon and Rosy Kenyon, Jakob von Plessen and Daisy Soames bought the Voorspuy family’s shares in the wider riding-safari business.
The four tents are identical, raised on stone and river-rock bases with wide verandas facing the valley. Mesh walls on three sides bring the view to the bed, a super-king with a safe built into the wooden headboard, and a zipped canvas partition closes off the sitting room behind, with twin basins and a hot rain shower at the back. Persian rugs and reclaimed timber soften them, dugout canoes serve as bookshelves, and beadwork by Maasai women runs through the glassware and table settings. The two-bedroom suite is set apart, with its own lounge, fire pit and a deck screened by trees for private dining.
The second leaves around four and returns after dark, a spotlight working the drainage lines.
Days run to the game rather than the clock. Tea and biscuits reach the tent before first light, and the first drive runs through to mid-morning. The second leaves around four and returns after dark, a spotlight working the drainage lines. Meals move around the camp, a cooked breakfast in the field, pizza or homemade noodles under the mess-tent canvas at lunch, cake at four. Dinner is laid in the fig glade some evenings, lantern-lit, with a fire working in the shadows. Wi-Fi reaches the tents, though it is easy to forget it is there.
A five-minute drive away, on the same stretch of the Olare Orok, a slightly larger sister camp is set down among the riverine trees, with its own staff and kitchen. Ndoto is the higher and quieter of the two, smaller and more self-contained, and families with younger children are usually better placed at the other camp. Balloon flights and helicopter charters can be arranged, along with a day drive into the national reserve itself. July to October brings the migration herds onto the Mara North plains, and January to March brings short grass, calving and clear skies.
accommodation
Five units in total: four identical tents and one separate two-bedroom suite. Each tent has mesh walls on three sides, a super-king bed, a separate sitting room, twin basins, a flush toilet and a hot rain shower, with a veranda facing the valley. The suite stands apart, with a twin room, a lounge, a private deck and a fire pit.
activities
Unlimited day and night game drives with a private vehicle and guide, guided bush walks, and off-road tracking, all permitted in Mara North Conservancy and not inside the Maasai Mara National Reserve. Sundowners, bush breakfasts, running with Maasai guides, and visits to Aitong market, a local village and the Koiyaki Guiding School.
conservation
The Tristan Voorspuy Conservation Trust, set up in his memory, supports For Rangers, which equips and trains rangers, and CHASE, which works on healthcare and the environment. Conservancy leases pay Maasai landowners directly for the land. The camp supports Aitong Primary School, which teaches more than 950 children, some now boarding.
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.
01
Maasai Mara
02
Maasai Mara
03
Maasai Mara
04
Maasai Mara
05
Maasai Mara
06
Maasai Mara
07
Maasai Mara
08
Maasai Mara
09
Maasai Mara
10
Maasai Mara
11
Maasai Mara
12
Maasai Mara
13
Maasai Mara
14
Maasai Mara
15
Maasai Mara
16
Maasai Mara
17
Maasai Mara
18
Maasai Mara
19
Maasai Mara
20
Maasai Mara
You fly. Scheduled services run from Nairobi's Wilson airport to Mara North airstrip, about forty five to fifty minutes in the air on a direct sector and longer when the flight calls elsewhere on the way, and camp is a short drive from there. A private charter, usually a Cessna Caravan or a Pilatus PC-12, flies direct and to your own timing, which is worth having if you are combining the Mara with somewhere else the same day.
Bags must be soft and are limited to fifteen kilograms a person on the light aircraft, hand luggage and cameras counted in, so pack a duffel.
It is set up for one. Ndoto is four tents and a separate two bedroom suite on a ridge above the Olare Orok, which means a family or a group of friends can take the suite and the tents together and have the camp working to their own hours rather than a mixed camp's.
Being in a conservancy rather than the national reserve helps too: walking with a guide and driving after dark are both allowed here and are not permitted inside the reserve, which gives older children and teenagers something to do beyond sitting in a vehicle. Tell us the ages and the shape of the party when you enquire and we will lay the days out around them.
Yes. Both TravelHealthPro, the UK's official travel health service, and the American CDC treat all of Kenya below 2,500 metres as malaria country, with the conservancies and game reserves named among the areas that carry risk, and this part of the Mara lies at roughly 1,500 to 1,900 metres. TravelHealthPro rates the country high risk and recommends antimalarial tablets for it; the CDC records transmission everywhere below that altitude. Central Nairobi and ground above 2,500 metres are the only exceptions either makes.
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.
Warm days and genuinely cold early mornings. Afternoons reach the middle twenties, nights drop to about eleven or twelve degrees, and sitting in an open vehicle before sunrise feels colder again. The long rains run from around March to May with April the wettest, and the short rains fall in November and December, more often a heavy hour in the afternoon than a washed out day.
Pack layers rather than bulk: a base layer, a fleece, a windproof jacket, long trousers, a hat and sunglasses for the hard high altitude sun. The fifteen kilogram soft bag limit on the flight in is easier to live with than it sounds, because laundry is done in camp.
rated five stars by our clients
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
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.
