Ol Pejeta &
Mount Kenya

Your private guide meets you at Jomo Kenyatta International and transfers you by luxury 4x4 to the JW Marriott Nairobi.

If you land before four in the afternoon, a guided city tour follows: the Nairobi National Museum, with its archaeology, palaeontology and ethnography collections, and the landmarks of the centre — Parliament, the Kenyatta International Convention Centre and the old railway station.

If you arrive later, the evening stays relaxed at the hotel and the city tour simply moves to Day 8. Either way nothing is lost.

North after breakfast through the Kenyan highlands towards the Laikipia Plateau — four to five hours, past coffee plantations, over the Rift Valley escarpment, with Mount Kenya on the horizon ahead. Comfort stops are built in.

You arrive at Sanctuary Tambarare for lunch. The camp has ten tents only, tucked beneath fever trees with teak floors, private verandas and views across the plains.

The afternoon is your first drive across the 90,000-acre conservancy: the Big Five, alongside Grevy’s zebra, cheetah and the endangered African wild dog.

The morning visits the secluded enclosure holding Najin and Fatu, the last two northern white rhinos alive anywhere. Both are female, and the subspecies cannot recover without intervention. It is a strange, quiet and genuinely important half-hour, and children take it in more completely than most adults expect.

Then the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary, the only one in East Africa, home to rescued chimpanzees from across the region.

Midday is a private chef-prepared bush lunch under acacia. The late afternoon drive looks for the predators starting their evening, ends with sundowners at a viewpoint, and the day closes around a bonfire dinner in the boma.

Up before dawn for a hot-air balloon over the Laikipia plains. The sun comes up over Mount Kenya with herds moving across the savannah below, and the silence at altitude is the part nobody prepares you for.

After landing, a traditional cooked champagne breakfast is served out in the open.

The afternoon is at leisure at camp, or given to optional extras: lion tracking with the conservancy’s researchers, or a visit to the K9 anti-poaching unit, which children find fascinating and which explains a great deal about how a place like this actually functions.

A short and scenic drive to the foothills of Mount Kenya and the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club, a historic property where the equator line runs directly through the grounds — there is a marker, and it is exactly as satisfying to stand on as it sounds.

The snow-capped peaks rise behind manicured lawns, which is a combination that takes a moment to adjust to.

The afternoon visits the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Animal Orphanage on site, to see the critically endangered mountain bongo — one of the rarest antelope in the world, and the subject of a serious breeding and rewilding programme here.

The morning begins with Breakfast with the Bongos — a chef-curated live-cooking breakfast set up a few steps from the bongo enclosure, which is a considerably better use of a morning meal than a buffet.

Then a horseback safari through the private conservancy tracks, riding alongside zebra, eland and waterbuck with Mount Kenya behind. The horses are gentle, the guides are patient, and it genuinely suits all skill levels including complete beginners.

The afternoon is the heated pool, the tennis courts or the golf course, and the evening is drinks on the club terrace watching the last light catch the snow on the peaks.

The bush on foot, with an experienced naturalist and armed rangers — tracking prints, learning the local flora, and slowing everything down to the pace at which the small things become visible.

Sightings include impala, golden zebra, giraffe and over sixty bird species, and walking is where children usually stop asking when the next lion is coming and start noticing everything else.

A final bonfire dinner under a very complete blanket of stars.

A relaxed breakfast, then the drive south to Nairobi with comfort stops along the way.

If the city tour was missed on Day 1, it happens now: the Karen Blixen Museum, the Giraffe Centre, or the Maasai Market for souvenirs. If it was done on arrival, the time is free for shopping at the Galleria or the Utamaduni Craft Centre.

Transfer to the airport for your onward flight.