Kenyan Highlights

Days 1 & 2. Depart London

Depart London on the overnight flight to Nairobi. On arrival in Nairobi you will be met and transferred to the elegant Nairobi Serena Hotel offering breathtaking views. The afternoon is at leisure but you may like to spend some time enjoying the sights of Nairobi, which include the Karen Blixen Museum, where the bygone era of the pioneering coffee farmer is preserved, Giraffe Centre for a view of the rare Rothschild Giraffe, the colourful city market, the snake park or the National Museum.

Days 3 & 4. Samburu National Reserve [B, L, D]

Head north to Samburu National Reserve and the Samburu Serena Lodge, some 325 kilometres north of Nairobi in the hot arid fringes of Kenya's vast northern region where you stay for the next two nights. The reserve is within the lands of the colourful Samburu people, close relatives of the Masai, and harbours a number of wildlife species rarely found elsewhere. These include Grevy's Zebra, Reticulated Giraffe, Beisa Oryx, Somali Ostrich, Vulturine Guineafowl and Nile Crocodile. The unusual long-necked Gerenuk is also a common resident here.

Day 5. Mount Kenya [B, L, D]

For a total contrast you head south-west today to the Aberdare National Park. The park consists of a range of extinct volcanoes clad in thick montane forest. Elephant, Black Rhino, Cape Buffalo, Bushbuck, Common Waterbuck, lion, Giant Forest Hog, Sykes Monkey and Bongo can be found here. Stay one night at Mountain Lodge, set in a forest glade with a waterhole that attracts all sorts of wildlife during the day and night. The waterhole is floodlit and there is an underground viewing platform.

Day 6. Lake Nakuru National Park [B, L, D]

This morning you head for Lake Nakuru National Park via the beautiful Nyahururu Falls, for a 1-night stay at Great Rift Valley Lodge. Lake Nakuru is a small shallow alkaline lake on the edge of the town of Nakuru lying 160 kilometres north of Nairobi. The lake is world famous as the location of the greatest bird spectacle on earth - myriads of fuschia pink Lesser, and Greater Flamingo which feed on the abundant algae. There are over 400 resident species on the lake and in the surrounding park, as well as some 25 Black Rhino, a number of Rothschild's Giraffe here as well as Common, and Defassa Waterbuck and both Lion and Leopard.

Days 7 & 8. Masai Mara Game Reserve [B, L, D]

Depart for the Masai Mara, for a 2-night stay at the Mara Simba Lodge. Everything about the 'Mara' is outstanding. The wildlife is abundant and the gentle rolling grasslands ensure that animals are never out of sight. The Mara is on the pathway of the yearly wildebeest migration which comes north about mid- September and returns south around the beginning of November. The fertile plains provide a totally unique environment and a spectacle which cannot be witnessed elsewhere in Africa where elegant Masai herdsmen attend to their cattle under the watchful eye of predators. The grasslands sustain an enormous population of wildlife including Elephant, Caracal, Zorilla, Serval, Burchell's Zebra, Grant's, and Thompson's Gazelles, Eland, Masai Giraffe, Topi, Bat-eared Fox, Spotted Hyena and Hippopotamus, and a spectacular avifauna which includes Usambiro Barbet and Yellow-throated Sandgrouse.

Days 9 & 10. Homeward [B (Day 9 only)]

Return to Nairobi by road for your overnight flight to the UK, where you arrive the next day.