I’m surrounded by big cats... pass me a vodka
ICAN’T remember when I last felt so utterly content – and yet there’s danger all around me. Just 100 yards away, a hyena is on the prowl, and in the distance a male lion emits a seismic roar. But I’m having the trip of a lifetime. I sip my vodka and tonic as I gaze out across the savannah and vow to tell everyone I know that they simply must visit Kenya.
It’s a place I’d found intoxicating from the very beginning. Fortyfive minutes after touching down in Nairobi, my girlfriend and I are sipping cocktails on the terrace of The Emakoko – our superb luxury lodge home for two nights – nestled in the Nairobi National Park.
To see the creatures that inhabit this park, you don’t even have to leave the lodge – hippos have been known to graze on its lawns by the pool, and there’s a vultures’ nest nearby – but we go on a game drive just to make sure.
We tick off black rhinos, giraffes, hippos, zebras, baboons and jackals. Only big cats elude us. Our enthusiastic guide, Peter, also takes us to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in the park, which is a sort of creche for orphaned elephants – and two ostriches called Pea and Pod. Naturally, they melt our hearts, and the lodge wins us over, too, thanks to its convivial owner Anthony Childs, ably assisted by a snake expert who regales us with tales of derring-do in the face of a black mamba attack. After listening to his fascinating stories, we retire to our bedroom that is so big it could easily accommodate a couple of hippos.
AFTER our two-night stay, we fly north to another astonishing lodge, The Sanctuary At Ol Lentille. The setting may be different but the luxury and conviviality continue unabated. The lodge is perched near the Equator on a rocky hilltop on the Laikipia Plateau, a two-hour drive from Nanyuki airport, with the craggy peak of Mount Kenya, Africa’s second-biggest mountain, on the horizon.
Exclusivity is the word here – there are just four rooms available. Well, I say rooms: they’re more like minivillas, each beautifully styled. They also come with their own butler.
Our room is called The Eyrie. It’s a nest with a circular, dome-ceilinged bedroom, a round bed that has something of the Austin Powers about it, and a sunken bathtub on the decking outside. In a separate part of our accommodation, we have a living room with huge bean bags and an open fire, and a dining room. Stupendous views of the bewitching landscape come as standard. The wildlife here is bigticket – the lodge’s camera trap snapped two leopards nearby before we arrived – and I particularly enjoy scanning the land for movement as I loll about in the infinity pool. We also get out and meet the neighbours. A guide takes us to a local village where we dance and jump about with the welcoming
Maasai inhabitants before heading to a primary school where the children gaze in wonder at my girlfriend’s snazzy Nikon camera. I also enjoy a race around the block on a quad bike.
OUR hosts at the lodge, John and Gill, are great conversationalists and conservationists. They tell us that some of the money from the business is ploughed straight back into the local community, funding schools and hospitals, and providing security for the cattle and wildlife against poachers and bandits.
Our final stop is equally ecofriendly but in an eco-system that has a much greater density of animals – the world-famous Masai Mara. For most people, this is the Africa that immediately springs to mind: a vast expanse of savannah dotted with acacia trees and teeming with big game.
As our 12-seater Cessna from Laikipia sweeps in and we disembark on the grassland airstrip, we spot hippos and four giraffes. It’s like stepping straight into a wildlife documentary.
Our accommodation at Mara Plains, meanwhile, is superb beyond estimation – this is glamping taken to a whole different level.
Mara Plains, slickly run by jolly Hattie and her husband Henry, an ex-British Army officer, is a collection of seven ‘tents’ fit for royalty. Each has a standalone copper bath, a walk-in shower, and cosy furniture made from recycled travel trunks. We go on several game drives and see cheetahs, leopards, mating lions, herds of elephants and cute bat-eared foxes.
And if that isn’t memorable enough, heavenly breakfasts and sundowners on the savannah are laid on just for us.
Here in the Mara, you’re never far from a sharp-toothed predator, but you’re well looked after out on the savannah and at the camp by Maasai warriors. They can spot a big cat at 200 yards, and will confront one to keep you safe.
A male lion prowling nearby? Fear not. I’ll have another vodka and tonic, please.