Activities
A day on a Nigel Archer safari.
No safari is about just one thing. These are the experiences we build days around — and why each of them, done the way we do it, is worth the travel.
Game drives
Private vehicle, private guide, the day that finds you.
Every Nigel Archer safari includes your own vehicle and your own senior guide for the duration of the trip. That means you set the pace — a long morning following a single leopard, a whole day out with a packed picnic, a late return in the dark because the lions are walking. Nobody is tapping a watch.
Our vehicles are custom Land Cruisers: six guest seats with plenty of room for cameras, open sides, drop-down windows for photography, charging points, chilled water, and roof-mounted searchlights for night drives from the Mobile Camp and private conservancies where they are permitted.
Walking safaris
The bush at three miles an hour.
A walking safari is the oldest form of safari and still, for many of our guests, the most memorable. On foot, with a senior armed guide and a tracker, you pick up the details you miss from a vehicle — the tracks in the sand, the scent of wild jasmine, a bee-eater flying up from a dry riverbed.
From the Mobile Camp we walk nearly every day, and from our bush locations we can set out on longer multi-day walks into the hills for those who want them. At Seringet, walking safaris are arranged in the neighbouring conservancies — a short drive from camp — where the reserve rules allow us to be on foot.
Hot-air balloon
First light. No sound but the burner.
A dawn balloon flight over the Mara is one of those things that is everybody's favourite for a reason. You lift off at sunrise, drift with the wind across the plain, and the shadows of elephant and giraffe stretch long beneath you. The flight ends with a Champagne breakfast in the grass, laid with linen and silver, wherever the balloon has landed.
We arrange balloon flights from Seringet Mara Camp and from the Mobile Camp when it's pitched in the Mara.
Helicopter
To reach the corners the roads cannot.
A private helicopter opens up a second Kenya — volcanic craters in the Suguta Valley, flamingo-pink soda lakes, the sacred mountain of Ol Doinyo Lengai, and the empty sand rivers of the north. We work with a trusted pilot who has been flying these valleys for decades.
Heli-safaris can be stand-alone days, or a few nights of the trip, with the helicopter moving you camp-to-camp and dropping in at places no road reaches.
Culture & community
Real days with real people.
We've spent twenty-five years building genuine relationships with Maasai, Samburu and Laikipiak communities near where we camp. The visits we arrange are not staged dance performances — they are half-days with people we've worked with for years. A trip to a school we support. Lunch at a local home. A walk to a water point with Samburu women. The difference between this and tourism-village culture is obvious within ten minutes.