The Grand Safari
The "Grand Dame" of safaris, this classic itinerary in Kenya and Tanzania includes the most glorious landscapes and wildlife by day, while offering stunning, 5-star accommodations by night.
SPECIAL OFFER
7.9*
ECO SCORE
8
PASSENGERS
15
DAYS
3/5
ACTIVITY LEVEL
East Africa: Drink It In
The grand, glamorous, unabashedly luxurious safaris favored by princes and princesses, potentates, plutocrats, and ex-presidents (Teddy Roosevelt's epic 1909 safari was one of the first of its sumptuous kind) are central to East Africa's heritage as one of the world's most desired destinations. This Grand Safari is this operator's homage to those old and romantic days, to their indulgent and exquisite grace. The Grand Safari's six flights make travel between game preserves and luxury camps a seamless, time-saving joy. And stays in places like the airy Tortilis Camp in Amboseli; Bateleur or Governor's Il Moran camps in the Maasai Mara; the charmingly luxe Four Seasons Safari Lodge in the Serengeti; and, of course, the Lewa Safari Camp on the Laikipia Plateau bring us into close and comfortable contact with some of Africa's richest game lands and most stirring landscapes.
Travel Curator’s Insights:
- • The founders welcome you into their beautiful home in Nairobi upon arrival.
• Includes a spectacular hot air balloon safari followed by a champagne breakfast upon descent.
• Exiting game drives with world-class guides. Every detail is seen to. We highly recommend this fantastic, 5-star operator.
Trip Sustainability Awards
CARBON
Fantastic advances in minimizing carbon footprints at locations.
ENERGY
On the East African Energy Renewal Board
EDUCATION
Runs local educational facilities for children.
Itinerary
Day 1: En Route
Your adventure begins today as you enplane for Africa.
Days 2 & 3: Nairobi, Kenya’s Bustling, Cosmopolitan Capital
Upon arrival in the Kenyan capital, you’ll be met by your Safari Director and driven to Hemingways, a hotel that great lover of Africa would have savored for its classic African ambience and old-school luxuries.
The next day, we’ll wend our way over to the Giraffe Centre for some interspecies camaraderie, and visit the former home of Karen Blixen, author—writing as Isak Dinesen— of Out of Africa, one of the most evocative books ever written about any earthly place. And we’ll head over to Lavington, the home of Felix and Jane Pinto, this operator's founding couple, for a hearty, familial, and story-flavored lunch, then tour the excellent National Museum before returning to our hotel.
Accommodation: Hemingway's, Nairobi
Hemingway's: Brilliantly decorated in a high colonial plantation style, Hemingways Nairobi is a gem of a boutique hotel located in the lush and quiet Nairobi suburb of Karen (named for Karen Blixen, who wrote Out of Africa under her pen name Isak Dinesen. Her beloved Ngong Hills are evocatively visible from the balcony of all Hemingways rooms.)
Days 4 & 5: Amboseli, In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro
We fly south this morning over the Athi Plains to the natural wonderland of Amboseli National Park. Mount Kilimanjaro, the still-glaciated monarch of Africa, presides over Amboseli, thrusting three dizzying miles above the park’s grasslands. As Peter Matthiessen wrote in The Tree Where Man Was Born, “A snow peak in the tropics draws the heart to a fine shimmering painful point of joy.”
Tortilis Camp is our base for visits to Maasai villages and game drives in this almost incomparably rich animal kingdom. Our spacious, luxuriously furnished, thatch-covered tents nestle under the huge and reposeful Tortilis acacia trees from which the camp takes its name. Unwinding on our veranda, we might, like Isak Dinesen, watch a parade of elephants “pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world.”
Accommodation: Tortilis Camp
Tortilis Camp: Splendidly set right on the border of Amboseli, one of Africa’s greatest national parks, Tortilis is a small gem of a tented camp that honours old safari traditions while keeping current with the latest in modern conveniences and thoughtful luxuries, a combination Micato seeks in all its camps and lodges, and here, in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, is brilliantly showcased.
Days 6 & 7: Classic Game Viewing at Lewa Safari Camp
Set high up on the Laikipia Plateau, graced with unendingly various views of lordly Mount Kenya, Lewa Safari Camp is the jewel of the famed Lewa Conservancy, which has helped create the template for the successful conservancy model of wildlife and habitat preservation. Lewa’s wide range of terrains support a full cast of predators and prey; it’s home to the world’s largest concentration of Grevy’s zebra, and its 130 happily roaming black and white rhinos are a testament to the Conservancy’s resolute and ingenious conservation efforts.
Accommodation: Lewa Safari Camp
Lewa Safari Camp’s 13 thatched roof tents are classically airy and simply, easefully luxurious. Each has a modern en suite bathroom and a large private verandah overlooking one of the continent’s vastest and most vibrant African landscapes.
Days 8 & 9: The Great Wildlife Haven of the Maasai Mara
This morning we’ll fly over the planetary rumple of the Great Rift Valley—it makes “the Grand Canyon look like a line scratched with a toothpick,” John Gunther wrote in Inside Africa—to the Maasai Mara, the northern sector of the bigger-than-Belgium Serengeti–Maasai Mara ecosystem, unquestionably the earth’s greatest haven for large mammals, more than 70 species of which go about their business in the oceanic Serengeti–Maasai Mara grasslands.
Based from equally splendid Bateleur Camp or Governor’s IL Moran Camp, we’ll game drive throughout the Mara, spend rewarding time with the local Maasai people, and make side trips to the Mara River and its tributaries for a gander at leviathan crocodiles and hippos. And we’ll have sundowners in the gentle evening warmth of the “true world” Ms. Dinesen wrote her mother about, breathing its clean and guileless air, watching Africa’s showy stars come out to dazzle, feeling like we might have dallied in these parts, 10,000 years ago.
On our second day in the Mara, we’ll sweep in a hot-air balloon above the siringet, or the “endless place,” as the Maasai call this great land (normally an additional cost, ballooning on the Grand Safari is part of the luxe experience). And at flight’s end, we’ll savor a champagne breakfast; we’ll already be a little giddied by the plain’s beauty and our good fortune to be so welcome and at ease in its presence.
Accommodation: Bateleur Camp or Governor’s IL Moran Camp
Bateleur Camp: Bateleur Camp is vintage safari through-and-through, and nothing short of time travel can replicate the experience you’ll have here. The style of the camp harkens back to the halcyon days of safari when well-heeled adventurers roamed the plains in search of big game with all the comforts of home carried by porters, from mahogany writing desks and beds to silver tea services.
Days 10 & 11: The Serengeti, Iconically Vast and Golden
We fly to the Serengeti via Nairobi and Arusha, Tanzania. Three million or more large mammals—elephants, cheetahs, gazelles by the gazillions, wildebeest, zebras, giraffes “floating across the plain” (thanks, Ms. Dinesen), lions, rhinos, and going on 60 more species— inhabit the great grassland, its riverine forests, and bustling, set-piece kopjes, rock islands that pop up from the plain.
We’ll spend our two Serengeti nights in either the Four Seasons Safari Lodge Serengeti or Grumeti Serengeti Tented Camp. The magnificently conceived Four Seasons is set on a fine collection of kopjes, looking out at what seems to be a golden eternity, with sunrise skies “banded with rose and lemon and the colour of flamingo wings,” as Elspeth Huxley wrote. Grumeti is a chic, 10-tent camp set along the banks of river, bustling with stunningly sizable crocs and hippos, always heftier than we remember. These are the kinds of African places that Micato loves to introduce our guests to, places that seduce us into slowing down.
Accommodation: Four Seasons Safari Lodge Serengeti or Grumeti Serengeti Tented Camp
Four Seasons Safari Lodge Serengeti: The Four Seasons folks understand and cherish the Serengeti, and a stay in their Safari Lodge Serengeti is a hard-to-top experience of the plain and its idyllic rocky kopjes and the vast assemblage of animals large, small, fascinating, and unexpected, that inhabit it.
Days 12 & 13: The Lost World of the Ngorongoro Crater
We fly southeast from the unforgettable Serengeti to Lake Manyara – the lake that heart-stirringly erupted with thousands of flamingos in the film Out of Africa. Ernest Hemingway thought, and many of us think, – that Manyara is Africa’s loveliest lake. We’ll have splendid views of the lake during lunch at the refreshing Lake Manyara Serena Safari Lodge, and perhaps have time to amble, maybe catching sight of some local predators and sprightly birds.
Now we make the lovely drive across the Crater Highlands and up to the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, perched on the rain-forested rim of the Ngorongoro Crater, one of our solar system’s greatest geographic ornaments.
In The Tree Where Man Was Born, Peter Matthiessen captured one of the crater’s enigmas: “How did the hippopotamus find its way up into the Crater Highlands, to blunder into the waters of Ngorongoro? Today one sees them there with wonder, encircled by steep walls.” Indeed, meandering around the softly lush caldera floor, we may feel like Professor George Edward Challenger and Lord John Roxton in Arthur Conan Doyle’s thriller The Lost World. True, we won’t see any Aardonyxes or Zupaysauri, but—as we often say—once you’ve really looked at a rhino, or contemplated the gigantic unlikeliness of an elephant, your old sadness at never having seen a dinosaur will be lightened.
Accommodation: Ngorongoro Crater Lodge
Ngorongoro Crater Lodge: Ngorongoro Crater Lodge’s 30 stilted suites are admired for their architectural verve and luxe, but they’re only the beginning of a rare African experience of the fabled Ngorongoro Crater, a natural masterpiece that belongs on every traveller’s life list.
Day 14: Back to Nairobi and Onward
After breakfast and a last look at the Edenic lands below, we’ll drive to Lake Manyara and hop on our flight to Nairobi, where we’ll have a day room at The Norfolk or the Four Points by Sheraton at the Nairobi Airport, and get a bite to eat before being driven to the airport for our late flights back to the Northern Hemisphere.
Day 15: Connect in Europe with Homeward Flights
…for flights home.
Rates
Questions?
I had the good fortune of traveling on a very similar safari with this operator and it was over-the-top fantastic. Highly recommended!
Joy Martinello, Founder
Questions?
What’s Included & Cancellation Policy:
WHAT'S INCLUDED
Spectacular hot air balloon safari followed by a champagne breakfast upon descent; Luxury accommodations and all meals, including a welcome meal at the private home of the founders; A highly-credentialed Safari Director and Driver-Guide during your journey.; 24/7 Concierge Team poised to meet last minute, unexpected, and unusual requests.; A variety of activities, individualized for you by your Safari Director at every safari location; Every last gratuity, even substantial ones to Safari Directors, Driver-Guides, waiters, porters… and everyone else, from beginning to end of your safari; Regional wine and beer at mealtimes, vehicles stocked with soft drinks and bottled water; Daily valet laundry service. You can pack less and even return home with a bag of clean clothes… now that’s luxury! Complimentary in-vehicle Wi-Fi as well as free Wi-Fi wherever else it exists on safari, including camps and lodges; All airport transfers, game park, national park, and conservancy fees; Extensive safety protocols perfected by 55 years of on-the-ground expertise; Sublime safari swag! Bush hats, specially designed Safaris duffels, luggage tags, document wallets, flashlights, and more; For every guest on safari, this operator sends an African child to school.
