Elephants and giraffes work the Olotulo-Murt salt lick below the tents at first light and again at dusk, in full view of the mess, and no game drive is required to see them. Hippos grunt in the river bend a stone’s throw from the beds. Mineral seeps like this are scarce in this part of Kenya, which is what draws such steady traffic of plains game to a single point of ground.
Hippos grunt in the river bend a stone’s throw from the beds.
Tangulia Mara occupies private land on the north-western edge of the Maasai Mara National Reserve, a rocky rise above the springs with the Mara River curling below. Open-fronted on the outcrop, the mess faces south over the lick to the reserve and west along the river’s bends to the Oloololo Escarpment. The camp’s own ground stays open after dark, when the reserve closes to vehicles.
Jackson Looseyia was born in the Mara in 1967 and began as a night guard and tracker, following his father through the bush. He became the first Maasai guide in the Maasai Mara. From 2008 he co-presented the BBC’s Big Cat Live. In 2016 he opened Tangulia Mara with Dominic Nchoe, a fellow Maasai who had run an earlier camp on this ground and later helped establish the Lemek Community Conservancy.
They grew up herding cattle among these same lions.
The two still direct Tangulia Mara, the first Maasai-owned and run camp on the Mara, and the staff come from the surrounding community. They grew up herding cattle among these same lions. Jackson’s son Morris now guides here, alongside Mary Sena, the camp’s female guide, and evenings settle around a stone bar and kikoi-covered sofas, with stories told at the fire.
Game drives out of camp go two ways. East and south lies the reserve itself, beginning at Musiara Marsh, home to a resident pride the guides have followed closely enough to know by name, and running on to Rhino Ridge and the short-grass plains beyond. Vehicles carry no more than six guests, with charging points, bean bags to steady a camera and reference books for birds and trees. Buffalo, elephant, giraffe, hippo, lion, spotted hyena and zebra turn up on close to every drive; cheetah come less predictably, and leopard rarer still.
Across the Mara River bridge, a short drive west, the Mara Triangle holds the number of vehicles at any sighting to five, which slows the pace and improves the odds of black rhino on the open ground beneath the escarpment. From July into October, the wildebeest and zebra herds work the river crossings, reachable from either bank. The bridge is why the camp is where it is, at the meeting point of two distinct pieces of the same ecosystem. Balloon flights lift off at dawn from the Musiara sector and land to a bush breakfast on the plains.
Night drives run with a spotlight for genets, bushbabies and hunting hyenas.
The camp’s ground is private land, so the activities continue after the gates close elsewhere. Night drives run with a spotlight for genets, bushbabies and hunting hyenas. Bat-eared foxes come out as the light fades and the sundowners carry no closing time. Walks go out on the plains in front of camp with a Maasai guide reading tracks along the way. A short walk from the main camp, the smaller Tangulia Ndogo takes a single group at a time, with its own mess, vehicle, chef and guide.
Tents stand under thatch among olive trees and croton bush, furnished with pieces made on site from fallen indigenous timber, the clothes hangers and trim beaded by a local women’s group. The décor keeps to a Maasai idiom rather than the colonial safari look, red-and-white kikoi on the sofas, a stone bar, and Jackson’s own photographs of river crossings on the walls. Food is home-style Kenyan cooking, taken at one long wooden table or set up in the bush after an early start. Arrival is by light aircraft into Musiara, roughly 20 minutes from camp, and helicopter transfers are also possible.
accommodation
Six en-suite tents and a two-bedroom family tent are set under thatch on raised decks, most of them back among olive trees and croton. Each opens onto a shaded verandah and is dressed in cotton linen, with locally beaded hangers and a bathroom with a flush loo and hot water. Lighting is solar, with a charging point in every tent.
activities
Game drives cover Musiara Marsh, Rhino Ridge and the short-grass plains inside the reserve, and the Mara Triangle across the bridge. Night drives, guided walks and sundowners run on the camp's private land, unrestricted by reserve hours. Bush breakfasts, balloon flights and visits to nearby Maasai homesteads round out the offering. Private guiding with Jackson Looseyia can be arranged.
conservation
Dominic Nchoe helped establish the Lemek Community Conservancy and sits on its management board, protecting wildlife corridors outside the reserve boundary. Tangulia Mara supports the surrounding community, sponsors guide training for local women, and buys beadwork made by a nearby women's group.
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By scheduled light aircraft from Nairobi's Wilson airport to the Musiara airstrip, about 45 minutes in the air on a direct run and nearer an hour when the aircraft calls at other Mara strips on the way, then a drive of around twenty minutes to camp. The road transfer from Musiara is part of the stay. Kichwa Tembo is the other strip the camp uses, about half an hour away, and we would only route you there if the day's timetable made it the better landing.
The aircraft take soft bags only, fifteen kilograms a person including hand luggage and camera gear. If you would rather fix your own timings, or fly straight in from the coast or Laikipia without changing at Wilson, we can put in a private charter, typically a Cessna Caravan or a Pilatus PC-12, and land at Musiara at the hour that suits the first game drive.
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, listing every part of Kenya below 2,500 metres, the game parks included. The camp sits at about 1,600 metres on the Mara River, well under that line, and neither source makes a seasonal distinction, so the advice is the same in February as in August.
We are travel planners, not medical professionals, so we do not make recommendations about tablets. Which ones 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 in front of you. The non-medical part we can speak to: the tents look over water, so cover arms and legs from late afternoon and keep repellent to hand.
Yes, at any age, though the camp's own guidance is that it suits children of five and over, which is about right for a place where the day is built around long drives and the tents stand above a river. There is one family tent, two en-suite bedrooms with a sitting area between them, and the other tents can be made up as doubles or as twins.
Game drives at the main camp are shared unless you take a private vehicle, so with young children tell us and we will build a vehicle of your own into the stay; it changes the shape of the day more than anything else does. For a party that wants the whole camp to itself, the sister camp Tangulia Ndogo, a short walk away, is the better fit.
July to October, if the migration is the point: the wildebeest are usually in the Mara from about July and turn south again around October, and the camp has some of the main crossing points on the river within reach of a morning's drive. It is also the driest stretch of the year, July driest of all. The long rains fall from about March to May, heaviest in April, and the short rains come in mid November and December, when the plains empty of vehicles and the camp, being outside the reserve, stays open as it does all year.
Days sit in the mid to high twenties in any month, but the Mara stands at around 1,600 metres and the early mornings drop to twelve or so, and an open vehicle at first light feels colder than the number suggests. Pack layers: a fleece or warm jacket for dawn, a hat for the middle of the day, something for rain in the wet months, all of it in a soft bag under fifteen kilograms.
The Mara Triangle is the third of the national reserve that lies west of the Mara River, under the Oloololo escarpment, and it is run separately: by the not-for-profit Mara Conservancy on behalf of the county, since the early 2000s, rather than by the reserve's own management on the eastern bank. That separate management shows on the ground, and it is a different Mara from the Musiara side. From Tangulia Mara the way in is the Mara River bridge close to camp, so the Triangle is a morning's drive away rather than a day's expedition.
We would usually give it a full day with a bush lunch, so the guide can work the river and the ground under the escarpment without watching the clock, and keep Musiara Marsh and Rhino Ridge for the days either side. The reserve's gates run from six in the morning to six in the evening on both banks, and a day in the Triangle ends with the drive back over the bridge before they close.
Yes, with one of the camp's licensed walking guides, and on the camp's own private land rather than in the reserve. The reserve's rules keep visitors inside their vehicles except at set picnic and viewpoint spots, so a walking safari is only possible on ground like this, outside the boundary. The walks go out over the Tangulia plains around camp; the salt lick and springs below the tents need no walk at all, because the game comes to them, and a morning on foot is about the smaller things the vehicle drives past.
The camp also arranges visits to a nearby Maasai village, which pairs naturally with a walk on the same morning.
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