kenya: rhino tracking safari

Rhino are the most dependable sighting here, though nothing wild is a certainty.

Lewa and neighbouring Borana are run as one unfenced range of 93,000 acres, which carries more than 280 black and white rhino, or 14 per cent of every rhino in Kenya. Four nights there give you eight drives, and rhino come up on most of them.

The reason is the monitoring: animals are known individually and ear-notched so that they can be told apart, and the teams account for them continually, which is also why the landscape now sees births rather than losses.

On foot is a separate question. The days at this lodge run to guided walks with Maasai guides, riding and camel treks rather than a rhino patrol, so if walking in on one matters to you, say so when you enquire and we will put it to the conservancy.

One night buys one breakfast and one afternoon tea with the herd, and that is what this route allows.

We suggest two nights as the ideal and no more than three: the giraffes are wild, they come to the windows when they choose, and a single quiet morning leaves you nothing in reserve.

Adding a night is the change people ask us for most often, and it is an easy one to make at the start of a trip, before the flights inland are fixed. A second night also gives you time for Nairobi itself, which this route otherwise passes straight through.

Rooms here go a long way ahead, so tell us early if you want two of them and we will hold the dates while the rest of the route is put together.

A good deal, which is why four nights rather than two.

The lodge keeps more than thirty horses and ponies and takes riders of any standard, up to a weight limit of 90 kilograms, and plains game will stand for a horse in a way it will not for a vehicle.

There are camels to walk out beside, guided walks with Maasai guides at whatever pace suits you, and freshwater springs where children fish for crabs. On the drives themselves the lodge holds to no more than three vehicles at a sighting.

The scenic flight in the open-cockpit biplane is the one not to count on. The biplane is not flying at the moment, while the lodge's charter aircraft flies as normal, so we check it for your dates rather than build a day around it.

A set of dry-country animals you will not meet further south: the reticulated giraffe, Grevy's zebra, gerenuk, Beisa oryx and Somali ostrich, which guides across northern Kenya group as the special five, alongside elephant along the river and the usual cats.

Grevy's zebra is the rarest of them, with a world population of around three thousand and most of those in northern Kenya.

Westgate is community conservancy land rather than national reserve, so the days there run to night drives worked by spotlight, walks along the Ewaso Nyiro, camels and quad bikes, none of which the reserve itself permits, while day trips cross into the reserve for classic game viewing.

Three nights is enough to take both sides of that, and the arid country is at its most photogenic in the first and last hour of light.

Two windows, in both of which every area on the route tops our ratings: January and February, then July to September.

Dry going in Samburu and Laikipia, short grass in the Mara conservancies and clear air over Nairobi. July to October also brings the wildebeest onto the Mara plains, and Naboisho sits on their route, though the herds spread as they please and a river crossing means giving up a day to the reserve.

October holds up well in Samburu and the Mara, with Laikipia in between.

The long rains fall in April and May, the two months we would steer this route away from. March gets a challenging mark from us in the Mara, and Laikipia the same in November.

Against all that, the greener weeks bring newborn animals, migrants from November to April, quieter tracks and softer prices, and the rhino at Lewa keep to no calendar.

On three short flights in light aircraft, most of them routed through Wilson Airport in Nairobi, which is where these services are based.

Nairobi to the Mara, north to Lewa Downs for the conservancy, and on to Samburu; the airline runs two flights a day to Samburu, Lewa and Nanyuki, and each leg is roughly an hour to an hour and a half in the air.

The luggage rule is worth reading twice. It is 15 kilograms a person including hand luggage, and it has to be in soft bags, because the holds on these aircraft are shaped for them and a wheeled case simply will not fit.

Published times move, and a flight may drop into another strip on the way to yours, so we keep the mornings after one unhurried. A private charter is the alternative when dates are tight.