kenya & tanzania: riding the conservancies to the serengeti

You do not need to ride well at either stop, but the weight limits are firm and they are not the same.

Sarara's horses are right for complete beginners. It keeps twelve in the stable and four ponies for children, and rides out for about an hour over five to ten kilometres, with a limit of 80 kilograms for a beginner and 90 for an experienced rider.

Borana takes non-riders and beginners at any level, will not mount a child under five, and sets a strict 95 kilograms. Its half-day and full-day rides are for people comfortable at walk, trot and canter in an English saddle.

Send us heights, weights and an honest account of experience, and we will have the right horses picked out in advance. Anyone who would rather not ride can cover Borana on a bicycle instead.

You fly, and you land twice on the way.

The parks themselves hold no border post for visitors, the road crossing being Isebania and Sirari out on the main road, so the safari airlines run a service between the two ecosystems that touches down at Migori on the Kenyan side or Tarime on the Tanzanian side for passports and customs.

The published times give the shape of the day: one airline leaves the Mara at 08:15 and reaches the Serengeti strips at 11:20, and northbound the same journey runs from the Serengeti at 08:20 to the Mara at 12:15.

Allow a morning, and note that the service is published only for part of the year, roughly July to October and mid-December to March. The bag limit on these aircraft is 15 kilograms a head, that figure includes whatever you carry on board, and the bags have to be soft ones.

In the same months, yes, and on both banks of the same river.

Between roughly July and October the herds are in the north of the Serengeti and spread into the Mara, so the three nights at Mara North and the three above the Mara River both sit inside that window.

A crossing is a different thing again. They run from about late July into October, peak in August and September, and nobody publishes a success rate because none exists. Herds have been known to mass on a bank for days, turn back, or cross where no track goes.

What raises the odds is nights spent within a few kilometres of the crossing points, which is what the Lamai stay gives you. In other months both camps fall back on resident game, which here is no hardship.

Three months carry our top rating at all five places on this route: July, August and September.

They are also the months the herds are in the north, so for this itinerary they are the obvious choice.

October is nearly as good in the north and in the Mara, and a little more mixed in Laikipia.

January and February are the other strong pairing, dry in the highlands and the northern conservancies and kind to a camera, though the wildebeest are then far to the south and we would spend the Serengeti nights elsewhere.

April and May, the long rains, are the low point everywhere on this route, and March is poor in the Mara. November brings the short rains, and Laikipia takes them hardest of all.

Very few in the conservancy, and potentially a great many at the river.

In Mara North the rule is five cars at a sighting and not one more, which is why a leopard in a tree there is a quiet business and why the conservancy model costs what it does.

The Serengeti side works differently at the crossings: the Mara River has sixteen signed crossing points, with between thirty and seventy vehicles allowed at each, so a morning when the herds commit can draw a crowd. It is better to know that in advance than to find it out on the bank.

Early starts are the practical answer, and a good guide will often work a quieter point rather than the busiest one.

Yes, though two things hold its shape.

The first is the month. The three nights above the Mara River earn their place between July and October, and the flight that links the two countries is itself published for only part of the year, so a trip outside that window is a different route rather than the same one moved.

The second is the riding, which is the reason for Namunyak and Borana in the first place. Drop either and it becomes an ordinary conservancy circuit.

Everything else will move. Five places in thirteen nights means packing every two or three days, so if that sounds like a lot the usual fix is to lose the single night at the start, or give Laikipia and the Mara four nights each and cut a stop altogether.