Porini Lion Camp

By light aircraft from Nairobi's Wilson airport to the Olare Orok airstrip, which sits inside the conservancy. Safarilink and AirKenya both fly from Wilson to the Mara several times a day, in the morning and the afternoon, and about an hour in the air is typical, a little longer when the aircraft calls at another Mara strip first.

A guide from the camp meets the plane and drives you in, and that transfer is part of the stay. The aircraft take soft bags only, fifteen kilograms a person including hand luggage.

If you would rather fly on your own timings, we can arrange a private charter, typically a Cessna Caravan or a Pilatus PC-12, straight to the Olare Orok strip. Coming by road from Nairobi is possible but takes the best part of a day, so we only suggest it when the drive is part of a longer overland route.

Yes. TravelHealthPro, the UK's official travel health service, rates Kenya as high risk for malaria and recommends antimalarial tablets for it, setting apart only the city of Nairobi and the highlands above 2,500 metres, where it rates the risk as very low.

The American CDC draws the same line and includes the game parks by name. Olare Motorogi, like the rest of the Mara, lies well below 2,500 metres, and neither source makes a seasonal distinction, so the advice does not change with the seasons.

We are travel planners, not medical professionals, and we do not make medical recommendations. 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, best asked with your travel dates to hand.

The practical side is simpler: cover arms and legs from late afternoon and keep repellent close, especially for the night drives.

Olare Motorogi is a private conservancy of some 33,000 acres on the northern edge of the Maasai Mara National Reserve. It was formed in 2006, when 277 Maasai landowners agreed to set their land aside for wildlife, and Porini Lion Camp was one of its two founding camps.

Tourism is capped at 94 beds across five small camps, which works out at roughly one game-viewing vehicle for every 2,100 acres, so sightings are rarely crowded.

Being in a conservancy also brings night drives and guided walks with Maasai warriors into the programme. The landowning families draw an income, jobs and community support from the camps, and their cattle are still part of the picture: herds are grazed in planned blocks and moved on, leaving patches of short grass that the plains game follow, and the big cats with them.

Almost everything on the ground. The stay covers all meals, including picnic breakfasts and bush lunches, and the drinks: soft drinks, mineral water, beer, house wine and gin and tonic.

Game drives go out morning and afternoon in open-sided four-wheel drives shared with other guests, and night drives, guided walks with Maasai warriors and sundowners at a viewpoint are part of the programme too, as are the transfers to and from the airstrip.

The main extra is a balloon flight over the Mara. Full days in the national reserve with a picnic lunch can be built in, and the reserve charges its own entry fee for those days, separate from the conservancy's. Both fees appear line by line in the quote we send you, so you know exactly what is covered before you book.

Whenever the camp is open, because the lions here are resident: several prides hold territory within the conservancy itself, with leopard, cheetah and elephant alongside them. Outside the rains the grass is shorter and the game easier to find, and January to March is typically hot and dry.

The long rains fall mainly in April and May and the short rains in November and December, and the camp closes for a short spell in the rains, so ask us about dates early. In the migration months, broadly July to October, the wildebeest spill onto the conservancy's plains as well as the reserve's.

The days are warm but the mornings and nights are cool, and an open vehicle at dawn or on a night drive feels properly cold, so bring a fleece and a windproof layer. Pack neutral colours, a hat and strong sun protection, closed shoes for the walks and a light waterproof in case of a shower, all in a soft bag of no more than fifteen kilograms for the flight.

Properly so, and it is certified rather than self-described: the camp holds a gold rating under Ecotourism Kenya's eco-rating scheme. There are no permanent buildings. The ten tents stand on sand and gravel with no concrete foundations, solar power runs the lights in every tent, and the showers are hot bucket showers.

The camp was built so that if it were ever taken down, a few months and some rain would leave little sign it had been there.

The other half of it is people. The camp is run with Maasai staff and guides from the landowning communities around the conservancy, so the stay itself helps keep this land set aside for wildlife. If you would like to do more, guests can support community projects such as beekeeping.