The core of a safari: out at first light in an open-roofed 4x4 with a guide who knows where the cats were yesterday. Most of what you came to see happens in the two hours after dawn and the two before dusk.
Each of these is somewhere we run game Drives, with its own page.
Kenya
The Mara is the northern end of the Serengeti ecosystem, and the single best place in Africa to watch big cats hunt. Between July and October around a million and a half wildebeest and zebra cross the Mara River into it. The rest of the year it is quieter, cheaper, and still holds the highest density of lion, cheetah and leopard in Kenya.
Kenya
Amboseli is where you photograph elephants with Kilimanjaro behind them. The swamps fed by meltwater off the mountain hold big herds year round, the plains are open and dusty so nothing hides, and it is close enough to Nairobi to be worth three days on its own.
Kenya
Samburu is the dry north, and the wildlife is different for it. Grevy's zebra, reticulated giraffe, Beisa oryx, gerenuk and Somali ostrich live here and almost nowhere else in Kenya — guides call them the Samburu Special Five. The Ewaso Nyiro river keeps it all alive and draws elephant down to drink all afternoon.
Kenya
Tsavo West is the handsome half of Tsavo — hills, lava flows and green scrub instead of flat red plain. Mzima Springs pushes fifty million gallons of clear water out of the ground every day, and an underwater chamber lets you watch hippo and crocodile from below the surface. The rhino sanctuary here is one of the few places in Kenya to see black rhino.
Kenya
Tsavo East is vast, flat and red — the elephants here are stained by the dust and look it. It is the park you cross on the way between Nairobi and the coast, which makes it the natural way to put a safari in front of a week at Diani or Watamu.
Kenya
The only national park in the world inside a capital city. Lion, rhino, giraffe and buffalo on open plains with Nairobi's skyline on the horizon — and you can be back at the airport in forty minutes. It is the half-day that rescues an arrival or departure date nobody knew what to do with.
Kenya
Ol Pejeta is a working conservancy on the Laikipia plateau with Mount Kenya behind it. It holds the largest black rhino population in East Africa, the last two northern white rhino on earth, and a chimpanzee sanctuary. Because it is private land, you can track rhino on foot and drive at night — neither of which a national park allows.
Kenya
A shallow soda lake ringed by acacia and yellow-barked fever trees, fenced right around — which is why it works as a rhino sanctuary. Both black and white rhino are here in numbers, along with Rothschild's giraffe and the lions that have taken to climbing trees. It is ninety minutes from Naivasha and slots into almost any Kenya route.
Kenya
The Aberdares are cold, wet mountain forest and moorland — nothing like the plains below. The lodges here are built over waterholes and you watch from a balcony instead of a vehicle, often after dark, which is when the elephant, buffalo, giant forest hog and the occasional bongo come in.
Kenya
Meru is where Elsa the lioness of Born Free was raised and released. It is well watered, green and almost empty of other vehicles — thirteen rivers, doum palms, and a rhino sanctuary inside the park. For a traveller who has done the Mara and wants wilderness without a crowd, this is the answer.
Rwanda
Rwanda's only savannah park, on the Tanzanian border, and the story of its recovery is the reason to go. Lion were reintroduced in 2015 and rhino in 2017, so Akagera is a Big Five park again after decades without. Lakes and papyrus swamps make up a third of it, so boat trips sit alongside game drives.
Tanzania
Fourteen thousand square kilometres of plains, and the stage for the whole wildebeest migration — which is not an event but a year-round circuit the herds never stop walking. Where they are depends on the month, so the Serengeti rewards planning more than any other park in East Africa.
Tanzania
A collapsed volcano twenty kilometres across with twenty-five thousand animals living on the floor of it, walled in by a six-hundred-metre rim. It is the one place in East Africa where seeing all of the Big Five in a single morning is an ordinary outcome rather than a lucky one.
Tanzania
Tarangire has the baobabs and the elephants. In the dry season the river is the only water for miles and the herds concentrate on it — three and four hundred elephant in a day is not unusual, which beats anything the Serengeti offers. It is two hours from Arusha and usually the first stop on a northern circuit.
Tanzania
A narrow strip of forest, lake and floodplain under the Rift Valley escarpment, famous for lions that sleep in the acacia branches. It is small enough to see in half a day and sits directly on the road between Arusha and the Ngorongoro Crater, so it costs an itinerary almost nothing.
Tanzania
One of the least visited national parks in Africa, in the far west of Tanzania. In the dry season the Katisunga floodplain holds buffalo herds of a thousand and more, and hippo pile into the shrinking pools in numbers that have to be seen. You will likely be the only vehicle in the park.
Tanzania
The largest national park in Africa, and almost nobody goes. Nyerere — the old Selous — is boat safaris on the Rufiji river, walking safaris with an armed ranger, and wild dog, which is the species serious safari-goers travel for. It is the southern circuit, reached by a short flight from Dar es Salaam.
Tanzania
Tanzania's largest park after Nyerere, where the East African and southern African species overlap — so you get greater and lesser kudu, sable and roan in the same place as the usual plains game. Lion prides here run large, and the Great Ruaha river draws everything in during the dry months.
Uganda
The Nile squeezes through a gap seven metres wide and drops forty-three metres, and the noise of it is the reason people come. Around the falls is Uganda's largest park: a boat trip to the base of them past hippo and crocodile, then game drives on the northern bank for lion, elephant and Rothschild's giraffe.
Uganda
Uganda's most visited park, and the one with the most variety: a boat cruise on the Kazinga Channel past hundreds of hippo, the Kasenyi plains for lion, and the Ishasha sector in the south where the lions lie in the fig trees. The Rwenzori mountains stand behind it on a clear day.
Uganda
The Kasenyi plains are the open grassland sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park, and the reason you set an alarm for 5.30am. The park's lions hunt Uganda kob here, and a dawn drive across the plains is the most reliable big-cat hour in the country.
Uganda
Kidepo sits in the far north-east against the South Sudan border, and most people who rank Uganda's parks put it first. The Narus valley holds buffalo herds in the thousands, there are cheetah and ostrich found nowhere else in the country, and you will share it with almost nobody.
Uganda
The only Ugandan park with zebra, and small enough that you can walk in it, take a boat on the lake and do a game drive in the same day. Three hours from Kampala, it is the stop that turns a long drive to the gorillas into a proper first night.
Prices are per person. Any of these can be adjusted to give the activity more time.
Day trip in Nairobi, Kenya.
3 Days
3 Day
Embark on an exhilarating adventure with our Game Drives, where the iconic landscapes of Kenya and Tanzania serve as the backdrop for wildlife encounters. Join our expert guides as they navigate through national parks, offering a front-row seat to the beauty of the African savannah. From the Big Five to elusive predators and migratory herds, our game drives promise thrilling moments and unforgettable sightings. Join us for a safari adventure, capturing the essence of the wild and the untamed beauty of East Africa.
Climb aboard our specially designed safari vehicles, each equipped with open roofs for unobstructed views and photography. Traverse the rolling hills of the Maasai Mara, where herds of wildebeests graze, or follow the tracks of a leopard in the Serengeti. Our guides use their intimate knowledge of the landscape to position you for the best wildlife sightings, creating a safari experience that is both educational and awe-inspiring. Whether it's the majestic elephants of Amboseli or the elusive cheetahs of the Serengeti, our Game Drives are more than a tour; they're a journey into the heart of Africa's untamed beauty.
Say so when you get in touch and we will build the route around it, rather than squeezing it in on an afternoon when the light is wrong.
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