A wild romance

As the huge sky lights up at sunset, turning the distant Mount Kenya a fiery orange and blurring the edges of the thorny acacia trees, it is easy to see why Prince William took Kate to visit Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya on the holiday during which he proposed. Lewa is one of Africa's best-known private conservation success stories: 62,000 pristine acres of rolling hills, wooded valleys, savannah and rocky outcrops. It is an unparalleled place to see game.

Just driving to my lodge from the airstrip, my guide Johnson pointed out two endangered black rhinoceros, but the real prize was to be found the next morning while meandering through the mist on an ex-polo pony named Watamu; giraffe grazed implacably around us, and we startled a herd of the endangered Grevy's zebra into sudden flight. As we rode over the brow of a hill, we discovered a table set out for us in the midst of the savannah, laid with fresh fruit, toast and muesli, and the homely scent of bacon and eggs being cooked on a fire wafted from behind a nearby bush.

Wilderness Trails is a boutique lodge with individual cottages in the grounds of the family home of owner Will Craig. In my cottage, the room's colossal four-poster bed was shrouded in delicate muslin curtains; these, as well as
the wool rugs on the floor, are all made by local tribesmen as part of a scheme to draw the community into the project. Standing by the warmth of the stone fireplace, I gazed out over the Samburu tribe's sacred mountain, Ol Olokwe. The air was still and silent save for the gentle hum of crickets.

The days veered from the excitement of safari to evenings of blissful relaxation. I would take tea on the communal verandah, with dainty dik-dik antelope skittering across the lawn, then float in the infinity pool before indulging in a cold beer and fresh popcorn in the sudden dusk, listening for the grumbling calls of lion, which one evening we spotted from a Land Cruiser, limbering up for a night hunt.

Karamushu, the manager of Wilderness, has lived in the area all his life and tells wonderful stories, such as the time he was serving dinner to a guest in their room and an impala, the most elegant of African antelopes, shot in through the door. 'It must have been spooked by a predator. The floor was slippery for a hooved animal so it came in flying and got stuck in the mosquito net,' he told me.

Refreshed by my time in Lewa, I set out on the bone-crunching three-hour drive to Tassia, a lodge set on a high ridge, which sits above the plains like a piece of heaven. Although the altitude is lower than Lewa (which sits at a breathtaking 5,500ft), it feels higher, somehow on top of the world. Each of the six rooms is unique (mine was a two-storey tower) and none has windows. Instead, the rooms are open-sided, overlooking mile upon mile of Africa.

Tassia was built by the local Mukogodo Maasai community who lease it to the managers, Antonia Hall and Martin Wheeler, and in return receive 40 per cent of the profits for education, health and development. The local children now learn under a roof rather than a tree and, with Antonia's help, women from the village sell beaded wine-bottle trimmings and jewellery in the Tassia shop. Antonia is also an exquisite chef, trained by Prue Leith, and can create perfect soufflés around a campfire in the bush. Her cuisine is so popular that she has even produced a cookbook, which is available in the UK.

After beef filet and a few glasses of Malbec, I wound my way back to my tower to sleep on a great swinging leather hammock under a woven roof with a 360-degree view. During the night I heard a leopard's full-throated bark.

Antonia, who is British, and Martin, Kenyan, are a couple in their late twenties who five years ago leaped at the chance to manage Tassia and its 7,000 hectares of conser-vation land. Martin, a falconer who is exceptionally knowledgeable about all wildlife, has a number of injured birds of prey that he is rehabilitating. As the sun went down one evening, I sat on the rocks with a gin and tonic and watched a sparrowhawk fly to his command.

On the second morning, Martin took me for a walk. We left at daybreak and followed a dry riverbed where we picked up the fresh tracks of a leopard, just 15 minutes ahead of us. I was suddenly glad of the armed ranger with us and imagined the animal watching us with amusement from a tree. But it remained one step ahead of us and we didn't see it.

With its open-air accommodation and bush walks, Tassia is more rustic than Lewa Wilderness, where game drives are chauffeured by erudite young Maasai warriors. But Sera Wildlife Conservancy, the next stop on my tour, is even wilder. It is one of the newest in the Northern Rangelands Trust portfolio, 100,000 acres of virgin scrubland that the community hopes will one day rival Lewa in attracting tourists. There is nowhere permanent to stay at Sera, but in just two days, Willie Roberts, a second-generation Kenyan with a reputation for making anything possible, had constructed the mobile tented camp that his company Roberts Safaris operates in the bushy wilderness on the edge of a dry riverbed. Eight luxury tents surrounded a communal mess area that could easily have been someone's home - the coffee table was piled with hardback books about Africa and the bar stocked with single malt whisky.

Willie was hosting a group from China when I visited. Many of them didn't realise that the hot water, freshly baked bread and crystal glasses weren't a year-round fixture. Because the camp is temporary and only operates for a small proportion of the year, it has very little environmental impact. Part of the beauty of each of the places where I stayed was the way in which they work to preserve, as well as to showcase, the land around them. It is rare to have such guilt-free pleasure. Prince William chose wisely. ES