Kenya feel it?

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10 April 2012

This used to be the final camping spot on our mobile safaris," Mikey Carr-Hartley tells me across the glowing embers of the after-dinner fire we're sitting around at Sala's Camp, a seasonal riverside bush camp in a remote corner of the Masai Mara in Kenya.

"But we got sick of breaking all the crockery in our race to set up camp before our guests arrived, so we keep it here for three months at a time."

Mikey knows a thing or two about the safari business. His grandfather came to Kenya in 1896 and pioneered the original Hemingway-style luxury safaris. Today he and his wife Tanya own three small outfits which collectively offer a wonderful introduction to Africa: Sala's Camp, one of only three remaining mobile camps in the Mara (it disappears for five months of the year to allow the land to recover), Sasaab, a safari lodge in the Samburu and, as of last spring, Giraffe Manor, an eight-room hotel in the Nairobi suburb of Langata, built as a private family home in 1931.

It's not hard to see what drew the Carr-Hartleys to this beautiful corner of the Mara, fringing the Sand River just north of the Tanzanian border. Currently a dry and dusty highway for elephants, baboons and hippos, it is hard to imagine the river burbling with the sound of water, as it should when the rains come in a few weeks. The effect of what is said to be the worst drought in 10 years has not been helped by intertwined factors including global warming, decades of government corruption and a move away from traditional pastoralism for many indigenous people into farming requiring intensive irrigation.

The Mara is one of the most visited reserves in Kenya. An area of 1,510 sq km, it has the highest concentration of big cats in the world and offers exceptional game viewing all year round. On our first game drive, we spot a pride of 15 lions ranging in age from three months to 10 years. The cubs are chasing each other's tails, the fathers snoring under a tree, the mothers keeping a watchful eye and the teenagers gnawing at the bones of a buffalo. Further on we see a zebra high up in the branches of an acacia tree, where it has been dragged by a leopard, who is now eating it.

We are also in the migratory path of the noble wildebeest, more than a million of which have gathered here to graze, vast black smudges to the eye, in every direction, before braving the crocodile-filled rivers, continuing south into Tanzania.

The popularity of the Mara has not come without a price for locals, many of whom have been marginalised by unscrupulous safari outfits who build resource-draining resorts and put little back into the local community. It also means some parts of the Mara swarm with game vehicles. This scares away wildlife and can leave them traumatised — and it's not much fun for the visitor hoping for immersion in the African wilderness.

Sala's Camp is so remote that you often go for several hours without seeing another vehicle. The Carr-Hartleys have a genuine desire to "do it right" on a conservation level, by providing a low-impact safari experience that benefits the local community by nurturing the talents and skills of locals.

Seven spacious canvas sleeping tents stretch out along the edge of the river, each furnished with large comfortable beds and bathrooms with flushing toilets. It's absurdly civilised.

I am awoken for game drives every morning at 6am with fresh local coffee delivered to my bedside. At the dining table I devour delicious eggs and bacon. The great food continues at lunch and dinner where imaginative, fresh salads are served alongside tender meat and fish dishes. How better to start a day than by sitting on the roof of our vehicle wrapped in bright coloured Masai blankets as our guide, Olekashira, points things out to me and explains the finer points of life in the bush.

Heading north, the Samburu National Reserve in the foothills of Mount Kenya is less commercialised than the Masai Mara but no less wildlife-filled, and offers interaction with local communities. The drought has hit particularly hard here. Set on a hillside above the bone-dry Ewaso Nyiro River within the Westgate Conservancy, luxurious Sasaab Lodge offers a unique philanthropic approach to the lodge experience.

Its aim is to provide the affluent consumer with some form of authentic African experience while helping to build a long-term future for the local community by, among other things, employing and skilling an almost entirely local staff with the goal of eventually selling the lodge back to their community. A fund to help the community raise money to buy the lodge from the Carr- Hartleys is raised partly through a per night tariff of $31 included in each guest's nightly rate, and partly from additional guest donations and other outside donations.

The nine "tents" are actually lovely Moroccan-style permanent structures, each with its own spacious veranda and plunge pool, lantern-lit at night, with canvas walls and roofs providing natural ventilation. A new two-treatment room spa has been added, offering a short but enticing list of treatments including several by Liz Earle (her facial is great), whose products it stocks.

We gather at the "mess" (a less appropriate word there could not be for the exquisitely furnished, open-sided dining room, living room and bar that graduates down to a large communal infinity pool) before bundling into an open-sided vehicle with Sasaab's manager Alie and local guides Matthew and Innocent to visit one of the local settlements. While Matthew takes us around the village to explain how things work in the settlement, Alie turns the vehicle into a mobile clinic and people crowd around while she dispenses basic medicine and cleans and dresses wounds. Dirt-caked children crowd around us grinning and shaking our hands while mothers look on.

The Samburu people live in huts which are essentially frames made of branches covered in a hard shell of cow dung and ash, usually built in a circle and surrounded by thorn bushes to protect them from predators. There are few men in the village as they are off, sometimes far away, grazing their cattle while the women look after the children.

Sasaab has set up a Community & Education Trust to work alongside the Westgate Community Conservancy to help improve the quality of life within the community. So far they have revamped Ngutuk Primary School, providing one school meal for every child who attends, and are working with local women to make jewellery to be sold at the lodge, from which profits go partly to the women and partly to community projects. One night Alie arranges for us to meet villagers in the dry riverbed where they demonstrate some local dances and the men sing for us with rich, clear voices.

Back in Nairobi, the Carr-Hartleys recently purchased Giraffe Manor, an exclusive eight-room hotel that is also home to eight endangered Rothschild Giraffes. Jock and Betty Leslie-Melville purchased Giraffe Manor in 1974, turning it into an unofficial centre for the preservation of the Rothschild Giraffe — their efforts to rear and re-introduce giraffes to the wild had a significant impact on the survival of the species.

The 173-acre estate also includes an education centre for local schoolchildren to learn about their country's wildlife, which has become a must-see for any visitor to Nairobi. The antique-filled manor house feels more like the home of an aristocratic old relative.

The Carr-Hartleys are carrying out a rolling redecoration, preserving the feel of the place but freshening the overall look. What they won't be changing is the most novel aspect: that the giraffes come right up to the front terrace to visit you during sundowners and that one might stick its head in your bedroom window. A stay at Giraffe Manor is an exhilarating end to a Kenya experience.

In some ways, my trip threw up more questions than it answered about conservation tourism in Kenya. Take Sasaab. Should there really be swimming pools like this in a region with so little water? The answer is probably no — but then perhaps the sorts of guests who make the biggest donations to the community won't visit a lodge that doesn't offer the "pool" level of luxury.

I get a sense that the Carr-Hartleys battle with rather than gloss over dilemmas such as these. But if even half their guests come away thinking about the safari experience in a more informed way then it's worth it.

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Way to go

Kenya feel it?