Kenya trip wrap-up

This blog post covers some final thoughts on our trip to Kenya: things we learned, what we liked, what we might do differently if we did it again, and so on. These are just my own thoughts, and I'm no expert, having only been to Kenya twice and only once for a safari trip like this one. Your mileage may vary.
FYI, I've tagged all of the posts from this trip with Kenya 2025, so this link leads to a page that shows all of them in one place: https://www.dougmahugh.com/tag/kenya-2025/
Itinerary/Destinations
Marsha researched several options for safari companies, and we would up going with the people at Africa Safari Trips – https://africasafaritrips.com/. They listened to our interests and set up an itinerary that we loved. And one thing that made the trip really smooth and stress-free was the fact that we had an experienced guide with us throughout the entire trip. We got to know him well, and he handled all of the communication with park rangers, hotel staff, and others, so we could just relax and enjoy our vacation.
Our itinerary included three of the biggest national parks: Maasai Mara, Amboseli, and Tsavo West. Below are some of my impressions of each park.
Maasai Mara National Reserve is a great combination of spectacular and varied scenery and abundant wildlife. Most of it is hilly open grass plains dotted with acacia trees – mara is the Swahili word for spotted, and the name essentially means "spotted (with acacia trees) land of the Maasai people." So it's easy to see wildlife at a distance and drive straight to it. You'll see giraffes, elephants, buffalos, and many grazing animals on nearly every drive, and the Mara River winds through beautiful little canyons full of trees, with many hippos and crocodiles.

Amboseli National Park has a huge number of elephants, and they're larger and have bigger tusks than the elephants up in Maasai Mara. It also has lots of hyenas, zebras, buffalos, and other animals. Amboseli is extremely flat, and has few trees because the elephants like to knock them down, so I'd say it's the least interesting scenery of the places we visited. But wildlife is everywhere, and visible from great distances – we rarely drove more than a couple of minutes without seeing more wildlife.

Tsavo West National Park is densely forested bushland, and the hardest place to spot animals of the three parks we visited. Zebras are everywhere, and the giraffes and elephants are big enough to stick out above many of the bushes, but other animals can be hard to see. That said, it has the most interesting geography of the three places we visited, with rocky hills and mountains and a variety of lava formations.

If I were going to Kenya to see the wildlife and just had time for one of the three places we experienced, I'd go to Maasai Mara. And if you're mostly interested in seeing wild elephants and have limited time, then Amboseli might be the best option.
There's this concept of the "big five" animals in Africa – the lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and African buffalo. (NOTE: I incorrectly referred to African buffalos as "water buffalos" in some of our blog posts, because I learned that term on trips to Asia and didn't realize the difference until I did some reading after we got home from this trip.) The big five terminology was started by Western hunters in the 1800s, and it's common jargon among safari companies today. Most safari companies see it as a given that you'll want to see the big five, and they go to great lengths to make sure you do.
This may be good or bad, depending on your interests, so be sure to discuss this detail with your outfitter when you plan a trip. Rhinos are the hardest one of the big five to see these days, because they were poached so much and are very rare in the national parks. In our case, we went to the rhino sanctuary in Tsavo West specifically to complete the big five, but as it turned out we spent four hours on that mission and never saw a rhino.
If you really want to see the big five, here's what I would do. Plan a trip to Masai Mara, where you should be able to see all of them except the rhino. There are a few black rhinos at Masai Mara, but sightings are rare these days. And then plan a day in Nairobi before or after your safaris in Masai Mara, and go to Nairobi National Park there to see a rhino. There are rhinos in that park, which is right next to the city – in fact, that park is considered one of the most successful rhinoceros sanctuaries. It's right in town (so you can see skyscrapers in the background while viewing wildlife), but it's a place where you can be almost certain to see a rhinoceros.

We wanted to go in January for a variety of reasons, but that's not the month most outfitters will recommend for Kenya wildlife safaris. June to October is peak season, and the annual wildebeest migration peaks in the second half of peak season. We got better rates by going in the off season, and both the lodges and the safari sites were uncrowded.
Accommodations
We stayed in four different places, with two or three nights at each, and all of them were great. I'd call them all four or five star accommodations, comfortable and attractive with consistently great service. All of them had good WiFi, a pool, a bar, and prompt laundry service. Below are a few thoughts on each.
Our first two nights in Nairobi were at the Karen Blixen Coffee Garden and Cottages. It's conveniently located on the west side of Nairobi, and the grounds are teaming with beautiful trees and plants. The cottages are on little stone walkways through the trees, with short walks to three different restaurants, two different bars, and a swimming pool. It feels like a place well-heeled Brits would stay, which is probably true. The restaurants served a variety of interesting food, and their bar served the best cocktails we encountered on the whole trip.




Karen Blixen Coffee Garden and Cottages
In Maasai Mara, we stayed at Serena Mara Safari Lodge. It's perched on a hill far into the park, and we often saw elephants and giraffes from our room. It was great to wake up already in the park, with wildlife viewing starting immediately as we drove away. Baboons, warthogs, and monkeys roamed the hotel grounds, and the outdoor deck was a great place to sit and watch the sun go down. The food here was buffet-style, with chefs cooking one option as well for each meal, usually omelets or pancakes in the morning and pasta in the evening. This was the only swimming pool we tried out, and it had a spectacular view of the valley below and was was heated 24 hours a day.






Serena Mara Safari Lodge
At Amboseli National Park, we stayed at Ol Tukai Lodge. It's located inside the park, and has a Colonial feel with high ceilings, large open entrances, and thatched roofs. A raised boardwalk runs from the entrance to the main building, with a nature walk nearby, and the lobby is decorated with numerous African carvings and artwork. The food options were similar to Serena Mara. Monkeys are so common that they're a bit of a pest at times.






Ol Tukai Lodge
At West Tsavo National Park, we stayed at another Serena property: Kilaguni Serena Safari Lodge. The food and other services were the same as at Serena Mara Safari Lodge. The unique aspect of Kilaguni Serena is the watering hole, which attracts a wide variety of wildlife and is visible from the restaurant and bar areas. Those areas are open 24 hours a day and there are floodlights at night, so you can view wildlife any time you'd like. There are a few baboons around the buildings, and numerous colorful agama lizards.





Kilaguni Serena Safari Lodge
Precautions
When traveling to Kenya, you need to be prepared for yellow fever, malaria, and typhoid fever, and you should be up to date on vaccinations for tetanus and other things. Consult your local health department or your doctor for specific recommendations – never take medical advice from amateurs, including me.
You should also use sunscreen and mosquito repellent, since Kenya is on the equator and mosquitos transmit deadly diseases such as malaria. That said, I don't think I ever saw a mosquito on this trip. Our guide told us that they fumigate the parks a lot, so that may be a factor. I was surprised at the lack of mosquitos, but you should still take precautions.
Tsetse flies are another danger, because they can transmit deadly sleeping sickness. One morning in Tsavo West, our guide suddenly started slapping at his neck, because he had seen a tsetse fly in our vehicle and it landed on him. I slapped and killed a tsetse fly on the window next to me that same morning, but that morning was the only time we saw them.

And then there's the violent dangers, of course: animals that can eat you (lions, cheetahs, and leopards) or stomp you to death (elephants, buffalos, and hippos). But you really don't have to worry about those, because it's your guide's job to keep you safe from them, and the guides do a great job. We felt very safe inside our Land Cruiser.
Clothing
There's quite a bit of costume play in how people dress for safari outings. If you like to wear bush pants, safari vests, and hiking boots, by all means do so. But the simple truth is that when you go to the national parks of Kenya, it's illegal to step out of your vehicle in the wilderness, so you really only need to dress comfortably for driving around in a car. You're not going to be wading through a swamp or bushwhacking up a hillside.
It's hot, of course, so you need to dress for that. I brought several ultra-light long-sleeved synthetic t-shirts from REI, which were comfortable in the heat and provided good protection from sun and insects. And I wore jeans and tennis shoes the whole time, which worked well. The only time I longed for my hiking boots (which I wear almost every day back home in Montana) was when we got stuck in the mud, but that was an unusual circumstance.

A hat for keeping the sun off your head and neck is a good idea. I brought one, but wound up never using it because I was often standing up in the Land Cruiser to take photos, and the combination of wind and camera would have been a challenge. I have zero hair protection on my head, but I lathered up good with sunscreen on my head, face, and neck every time we went out, and that was sufficient protection to not come home sunburned.
Kenyan culture
A few folks have asked about what we learned about Kenyan culture. The simple answer is "not much." We learned as much about Kenyan culture by visiting its national parks as a Kenyan would learn about US culture by visiting Yellowstone and Yosemite.
Well, that's not entirely fair to our guide, who told us many interesting details of Kenyan culture every day while we were driving around. And we learned many interesting things when we visited a Maasai village, such as the fact that Maasai people eat very few vegetables and like to drink cow blood because they think it makes them strong.
Regarding food, the restaurants in our hotels felt like we were in the UK. Which kind of makes sense, since the Brits were in Kenya for a long time so their tastes are probably what Kenyan people think Western visitors would like.

Oh, regarding spelling: you may have noticed that I use Maasai sometimes and Masai other times. Maasai is the proper spelling, but Maasai Mara National Reserve is sometimes spelled Masai Mara National Reserve – even on their own signs and buildings. I tried to be consistent with what I saw, which means I was inconsistent.

Camera gear
Everyone has an opinion, and if you have an opinion on what camera gear to bring on a trip like this, you should go with your own opinion. Speaking for myself, I love my Nikon D850 and carry it everywhere, so that's what I brought on this trip.
The decision of what lenses to bring was challenging, in part because we had a flight on a Cessna (from Maasai Mara to Amboseli) that had strict size and weight restrictions for our carry-on luggage. I wound up going with a 70-200mm F/2.8 telephoto, a 20mm F/1.8 wide-angle, and a tiny 50mm F/1.4 for times when I wanted to keep the camera as small and light as possible. Overall, I felt good about these choices, and would do the same again.
I own a longer telephoto lens, which would have been nice a few times for birds or big animals far away. But we were constantly bouncing around in the Land Cruiser, and although being in motion isn't ideal for a telephoto shot, I got a few that turned out OK. A longer lens would have made that harder. And more importantly, a longer lens would have been even harder to control and protect in those rough conditions.
My camera and telephoto lens are going in to Nikon this week for repairs, because I had a mishap in Maasai Mara: my camera slipped off my lap going over a bump and crashed to the floor, with the telephoto lens on it. They survived, more or less, but the lens mount doesn't feel right and I got error messages a few times over the remainder of the trip.
I saw some people carrying two DSLR or mirrorless cameras: one with a telephoto lens and one with a wide-angle. That makes some sense, since sometimes big animals were so close that you needed a wide-angle lens. But I wouldn't want to try to protect two heavy expensive cameras at all times. I kept my phone handy and used it for wide-angle shots when needed, and that worked pretty well. And then back at the lodge, or in the Maasai village, I put on my wide-angle lens when needed.
Other thoughts
We drove from Amboseli to Tsavo West, and that was a long bumpy drive. After seeing the airstrip next to our lodge in Tsavo West, we decided we would have flown between those places if we knew it was an option – that would have saved a few hours, and eliminated one of the long rough rides. We did see the Maasai village on that drive, but there are other options for that experience that we could have fit in.
This only applies to our specific situation, but on the way home we wished we had either spent a night in Nairobi before flying home, or spent a night at a motel near Bozeman airport (or JFK) on the way home. Having 43 hours of travel between leaving the lodge and arriving at home, with a drive over an icy mountain pass in the last hour of the journey, was not something we'd want to do again. In hindsight, we asked the safari company to pack as much in as possible in a defined ranged of dates, and they delivered, but if we were to do it again we'd try to make sure the day of the long flight from Nairobi to JFK didn't include many other things.
Overall, it was an amazing trip, and things went very smoothly the whole time. Hard to say if we'll ever be back, but that seems more likely right now than it did before we went, and that's a testament to how much we enjoyed it.