9 nights in Kenya

After breakfast at your hotel, you will meet your private driver who will be assisting you for the day.

Please note that your exact pick-up time will be communicated to you the evening before by your guide/hotel management.

Start the day with an early morning game drive in Nairobi National Park, which has amazing wildlife such as lions, leopard, cheetah, buffalo, hyena and so much more. You will then be driven to Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage where you can observe the 11am - 12pm feeding of the young elephants. After observing these adorable creatures and learning more about the conservation work they are doing, you'll stop by for a lunch break at a favorite restaurant.

After lunch, continue to the Giraffe Center to learn more about the different types of giraffes and enjoy interacting with them. You'll then visit Karen Blixen Museum as your last activity for the day.

After you will be transferred back to your hotel to unwind before your next day adventure.

The Elsa’s Kopje guides are based at the lodge in Meru National Park, they have the whole park to themselves, and know their backyard intimately. The National Park incorporates an 84 sq km rhino sanctuary, home to over 70 rhino, both black and white. The size of the sanctuary ensures that finding the rhino is still a gamedriving challenge! Or take the time to leave the car behind and enjoy the small things – tracks, dung beetles, naked mole rats and micro-ecosystems.

Over the years, EWC have found many exciting ways to get out into the wilderness and really experience all it has to offer. While staying at Elephant Watch Camp, guides will discuss with you what you would like to do each day, and tweak plans according to your mood and their recommendations. They are in regular communication with conservation researchers and rangers across Samburu National Reserve. This makes sure you are involved with every exciting development, and are the first to arrive on the scene.

Your focus is likely to be to spend as much time with the elephants as possible. They adapt our schedules to match their daily rhythms. You might find them, early in the morning, ambling down towards the water from where they were browsing at night, or at midday in the shade of the woodland along the river’s banks. But you could also head out at sunrise to track a lion or a leopard to where they are lying up with a fresh kill.

This is the core activity for elephant watching as a vehicle provides the safest platform to take you right into the middle of the herds. EWC have a small fleet of specially modified four-wheel-drives that give you the best and safest vantage point. Drivers and guides are trained to approach animals respectfully so as not to disturb them. This means that Samburu’s elephants, big cats and most large mammals have become so used to our vehicles that they will play out their full range of emotions as if we weren’t there at all, paying us the great compliment of simply ignoring us. This allows you to experience them in their most natural state, in complete safety and comfort.

Dotted across Samburu National Reserve are a series of secret spots where you can safely step down from the vehicle to spend a quiet hour or two relaxing over a picnic lunch. Some are on high ground with views stretching across untouched wilderness to distant mountains. Others are in glades in the shade of the Acacia woodland on the banks of the Ewaso Nyiro. The chefs will have packed delicious food for you – ice-cold soup with fresh focaccia, Moroccan rice salad with mini burgers and seared chili broccoli, finished off with rum-laced melon mix for pudding – and plenty of chilled drinks in the cooler box.

Walking in Samburu is one of the highlights. There’s plenty of short walks to do around camp, like going in search of some of the small five – elephant shrews, buffalo weavers, ant lions, leopard tortoises and rhino beetles – or on a meandering bird walk with close to 400 species to identify. We know where to find hornbill nests along the river bank or a pair of Verreaux eagle owls that live close to camp, and there’s nothing more fun or unpredictable than answering the call of a honey-guide who leads you on a merry dance to find the closest bee-hive. When the river is low we can splash along in the shallows and show you where the crocodiles have slid into caves under the banks to estivate during the dry season, and the warriors are always up for a game of football in the dry river bed. For those who are more adventurous, nothing beats hiking up the famous flat-topped sacred mountain, Ol Donyo Sapache, or the peaks of the Matthew’s range.

After a long day exploring the wilderness nothing is better than a traditional sundowner – a cool cocktail with a clear view of the sun as its golden orb slides below the horizon. We like to take time to appreciate these celestial moments – the change from day to night, the rising of the moon, or lying beneath the dizzying expanse of stars. The best place for a sundowner is on top of a modest hill at the end of a snaking dry river to the west of Camp. The walk takes an hour at a reasonably gentle pace, in the company of a host of warriors. Often, by the time you arrive at the hill, the warriors are in a celebratory mood and keen to dance a renyatta – the traditional leaping competition of young men – that they may well invite you to join! This is often followed by a host of exhilarating games – like lions trying to steal calves from a mother cow – that are hugely popular with guests and warriors alike! We often suggest a gift of a goat as a thank you.

Elephant Watch Camp is very closely connected to the world-leading conservation charity, Save the Elephants, established by Iain Douglas-Hamilton as part of his pioneering research on the world’s largest land mammal. We highly recommend that you drop by the organisation’s visitors centre, a little way downstream from camp. There you can learn all about the elephant collaring programme, how radioactivity from the atom bomb helps us age ivory or how a successful beehive fencing project is preventing elephants from raiding crops. Outside the centre a display of lower jawbones shows you the sad relics of poaching but also how the researchers can age and sex elephants from their bones. Equally fascinating is learning how good scientific research can contribute long-term to elephant management in a rapidly changing world, where habitat loss is an increasing problem.

Most of our team come from villages that border the national reserves, and the nomadic community there regularly welcomes our guests to see a little of how they live. A few hours spent in the company of the Samburu families we know well makes a great outing for kids, who can learn how to milk goats, throw spears, make jewellery or even participate in a mock cattle raid. Elders and village leaders will answer all your questions. If there’s something on your mind, why not pop in to see the local wise-man, who is enormously generous with his insights and blessings. Eco-tourism offers important alternative livelihoods or income streams for these stoic nomads, and by finding ways to reinforce their culture and build on their natural conservation ethic, it helps protect the wild animals too.

Looming temptingly on Samburu’s northern horizon is Ol Donyo Sapache (Ololokwe), a flat-topped mountain with dizzying rock walls that is sacred to the local people and only a couple of hours drive from camp. With permission from the tribal elders, Elephant Watch guides can take you up to its peak for unparalleled views into what used to be called Kenya’s Northern Frontier District. A forest with ancient trees shrouds the top, and eagles soar along the cliff edges to catch thermals. You can ascend and descend in one day – a walking round trip with a picnic takes between four to five hours. Or we can set up a simple bush camp so you can overnight under the stars and experience the marvel of dawn from this exceptional vantage point.