More Photos (3)

Like other colonial-style lodges, Cottars 1920s Camp, as the name implies, is a safari lodge that recaptures the glamour and romance of an earlier era of African exploration. Its six white canvas tents contain antique rugs and furniture, large canopied beds, silver chandeliers and old-fashioned bathtubs. Other elegant touches include private butlers and dressing rooms as well as a reading tent for bookish adventurers. Cottars, unlike many other camps though, has a deep history in the bush (also as the name implies). Its owner Calvin Cottar, who opened the camp in 1996, is a fourth-generation Kenyan whose great-great grandfather founded the continent’s first safari outfitter, Cottars Safari Service, in 1919 (in what was then British East Africa). Over the next eighty years, the Cottars literally dedicated their lives to exploration in the Mara—a family chronology lists which members died from rhino tramplings and black water fever. Today, Cottars Safari Service is consistently ranked as one of Africa’s top outfitters while the lodge is the only permissible operator on a 22,000-acre private land concession. So while some areas of Kenya seem to contain more tour buses than lions, Cottars has a remoteness that would still inspire Hemingway and Blixen. Book well in advance. From $710/person/night.

Families or those desiring a bit more privacy should consider Little Cottars Camp, a collection of four secluded tents, located a short distance from the main six units. Each brings the villa concept into tented form and has two bedrooms, a large bathroom and a common sitting area. Call for rates.

More Photos (2)

Founded by one of the co-authors of the ground-breaking book, Among the Elephants, this camp in northern Kenya represents the culmination of a lifelong love for wildlife and a passion to protect it. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the renowned zoologist, wrote Among the Elephants with his wife Oria and now runs Save the Elephants, but it was Oria who determined to bring travelers in close contact with pachyderms.

The camp, located in the Samburu Reserve, takes only ten guests, who sleep in dreamy desert tents and often eat under trees which are occupied by curious monkeys. Elephants are the focus of the camp, and sixty-six known family units spend time in the Samburu. Tribesmen lead walks along elephant paths and point out matriarchs and babies by name. The evening can be spent on a huge sofa, watching elephant documentaries starring the Douglas-Hamiltons (Iain and their daughter Saba have worked on BBC and National Geographic films.) However, lion, leopard, zebra, giraffe and other species inhabit the Samburu, which can be explored on game drives, escorted hikes or rafting trips when the river is high.

Bottom line: It’s an ideal experience for adventurous families and adults who want a special safari experience with a real educational component.

Rates: From $500 for accommodations, including three meals, airport transfer and most activities, per person per night, depending on season. Single occupancy rates are higher.

More Photos (7)

Ol Donya Wuas Lodge, founded in 1992 by Richard Bonham, helped pioneer Kenya’s concession model of conservation tourism. The legendary safari guide, who also owns Sand River Selous in Tanzania, picked this spot for his own home and his pioneering sustainable tourism program. With this model, investors lease a large tract of land from local Masai farmers and give a percentage of their tourism revenue to the Masai. In exchange, the Masai agree to remove their livestock from the tract and curtail all wildlife hunting on it. Bonham’s concession grants him exclusive use of over 300,000 acres in Kenya’s Chyulu Hills—otherwise known as Hemingway’s “Green Hills of Africa”—which are located halfway between Tsavo and Amboseli National Parks. That works out to over 15,000 acres per guest if you consider that Ol Donyo consists of only eight thatched-roof cottages (two have an additional bedroom), each of which is solar powered and constructed from indigenous materials. There is a main “mess”, which serves as a communal living and dining area and each guest lodge has one wall completely open to the views of Mount Kilimanjaro. Bonham used the same organic design style in the guest areas that he used for his own house, which includes stone walls, thatched coconut palm ceilings and beds and tables fashioned from fallen olive trees. Bonham has also established the Masailand Preservation Trust, which donates money to local schools and health clinics. From $425/person/night.

To read more about Bonham’s groundbreaking initiative to save lions in the area, click here.