Private conservancies allow what national parks do not: driving after dark with a spotlight. Leopard, aardvark, bushbaby, genet and porcupine are all night animals you will otherwise never see.
Each of these is somewhere we run night Game Drives, with its own page.
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
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.
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.
Uganda
Uganda's oldest wildlife reserve, in the Albertine Rift where East African savannah meets Congolese rainforest — so the bird list reads like two countries at once. The Sempaya hot springs boil hard enough to cook an egg, and the Batwa still live on the reserve edge.
Prices are per person. Any of these can be adjusted to give the activity more time.
Night game drives are an excellent way to witness nocturnal predators and herbivores in their natural habitat in addition to providing an opportunity to observe nocturnal creatures like aardvarks, porcupines, and civet cats.
Large cats, like lions and leopards, hunt mostly at night, while hippopotamuses leave their swampy haunts to graze on the plains.
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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