7-Day Kenya Safari Tour

Nairobi Your Kenya safari begins the moment you land. Your Ayal guide meets you at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and transfers you to your Nairobi hotel, where the rest of the day is yours to settle in and recover from the journey. If time and energy allow, an afternoon visit to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s elephant orphanage offers one of Nairobi’s most moving experiences, orphaned elephant calves mud-bathing, feeding, and learning to be wild again. The evening is spent in comfort, with a briefing on the days ahead and the quiet anticipation of what Africa is about to show you. The Emakoko or similar

Activities : Game Drives

Maasai Mara After an early breakfast, your guide collects you for the drive southwest, roughly five to six hours through the Rift Valley and the rolling hills of Narok County, arriving at the Maasai Mara by early afternoon. The Maasai Mara National Reserve is one of Africa’s great wildlife arenas: 1,510 square kilometres of open savannah, riverine forest, and acacia woodland where lion, leopard, cheetah, elephant, buffalo, and hundreds of bird species share a landscape that has remained essentially unchanged for millennia. Check in to your camp, take a light lunch, and prepare for your first afternoon game drive as the plains light turns gold. The Mara has a rhythm of its own. Your guide will begin reading it immediately, tracks in the dust, distant vultures circling, the nervous behaviour of a herd. By sunset on your first full evening, you will understand why travellers return here again and again. Sarova Mara Game Camp or similar

Activities : Game Drives

Maasai Mara A full day in the Maasai Mara is a privilege few safari destinations can match. You will rise before dawn for the first game drive of the day, the hour just after sunrise is when the Mara is most alive, when lions return from a night’s hunt, when cheetahs scan the golden grass for prey, and when the light falls across the savannah in ways that stop you mid-breath. Spend the morning deep in the reserve, following sightings as they unfold. Return to camp for a leisurely lunch before heading out again in the late afternoon as the day cools and the animals become active once more. For those visiting between July and October, the Great Migration brings over 1.5 million wildebeest and zebra thundering across the landscape, including the legendary and unpredictable Mara River crossings, where crocodiles wait in the churning water below. In the evening, consider a sundowner on a raised platform or at a scenic lookout, a cold drink, the darkening plains, and the sound of Africa. Optional add-on: Hot air balloon safari over the Maasai Mara at dawn (highly recommended, bookable through Ayal at an additional cost). Sarova Mara Game Camp or similar

Activities : Game Drives

Maasai Mara to Lake Nakuru A final morning in the Mara, an early drive to catch the light and follow whatever the reserve decides to show you. No two mornings here are the same: the Mara has a particular quality of surprise that experienced guides learn to expect and guests never quite get used to. After the morning drive and breakfast, you have the option of a visit to a nearby Maasai community, an unhurried, respectful encounter with one of East Africa’s most extraordinary cultures. The Maasai have lived alongside Kenya’s wildlife for centuries, occupying a world governed by cattle, sky, and an ancient understanding of this land. Your visit includes a welcome ceremony, a walk through the village, an opportunity to speak with community members, and time to browse handcrafted beadwork and jewellery. The afternoon sees you depart the Mara for the drive north to Lake Nakuru. Lake Nakuru Sopa Lodge or similar

Activities : Game Drives

Lake Nakuru Lake Nakuru National Park sits in the heart of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley and offers a wildlife experience entirely distinct from the Mara. The park is one of Africa’s great bird sanctuaries, at peak season, hundreds of thousands of lesser flamingos ring the shoreline in a wash of pink that defies adequate description. The lake also supports pelicans, African fish eagles, cormorants, and over 450 other recorded bird species. Beyond the birds, Nakuru is one of Kenya’s most important sanctuaries for both black and white rhino, a reminder of what conservation effort, sustained over decades, can achieve. Waterbuck, baboon, buffalo, and Rothschild giraffe (one of the world’s most endangered giraffe subspecies) are regularly sighted in the dense woodland surrounding the lake. Full day of morning and afternoon game drives, with time mid-day to relax at the lodge and enjoy the views across the park. Lake Nakuru Sopa Lodge or similar

Activities : Game Drives

Amboseli After breakfast and a final short morning drive in Nakuru, you depart south for Amboseli National Park — a journey of approximately four to five hours that takes you past the Rift Valley escarpment and down towards the Tanzanian border. Amboseli sits at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, and the sight that greets you on arrival, elephant herds drifting across the open floodplain with Africa’s highest mountain rising behind them, is one of the most photographed and least adequately captured scenes in the world. Photographs never quite do it justice. Arriving in the late afternoon, you have time to settle into your lodge, take in the setting, and join an evening game drive as the last light falls on the mountain. Ol Tukai Lodge or Sentrim Amboseli or similar

Activities : Game Drives

Nairobi Your final morning in Amboseli is best spent early; the mountain is clearest before cloud builds, and the elephant herds gather at the marshes in the cool morning hours in numbers that take time to absorb. Amboseli is home to one of Africa’s best-studied elephant populations, and the individuals here are remarkably relaxed around vehicles, allowing long, close, unhurried observation. After breakfast and a final drive, you depart for Nairobi, arriving in the early afternoon with time for a lunch stop before your guide delivers you to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for your onward flight, or to your Nairobi hotel if you are extending your stay. Seven days. Three ecosystems. One country that stays with you long after you have left.

Activities : Game Drives