EXCELLENT
Based on 125 reviews
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Tobias KMay 21, 202610 days Rwanda-Uganda trip Billy planed an 10 days Rwanda-Uganda trip. Amazing trip filled with one in a lifetime experiences and to a fair price. I Will definitely recommend - also our driver and guide Edward, who was very nice 👌Posted on Tripadvisor
TurboprinsenMay 16, 2026Safari trip to Uganda for Gorilla trekking and to Rwanda for Bisoke volcanoes hiking and watching Golden Monkeys A fantastic trip to Uganda and Rwanda with our guide and driver Samuel. He is simply the best with his great knowledge of the area, wildlife and history of these two beautiful countries. We felt so safe and taken care of all the time and I will highly recommend Samuel as your guide 😊Posted on Tripadvisor
Maarten AMarch 30, 2026Carefree experience We were on a business trip and wanted to extent our stay with a two-day safari. We got picked up by Edward right where our work trip ended, and could enjoy a carefree experience. We even got an extra game-drive when we turned out to have a bit extra time. Edward was very helpful and brought us exactly where we wanted to go to. Would highly recommend.Posted on Tripadvisor
gitit6February 27, 2026שירות מושלם שירות מצויין לאורך כל הטיול הרגשנו שיש לנן מישהו שדואג לנו. הכל היה מצויין!!!!! מאוד מקצועיPosted on Tripadvisor
Elizabeth CFebruary 18, 2026A couple getaway! We had a very short day in Uganda. Definitely wish we would have prolonged it a few more days. Our guide Sam was absolutely spectacular. He was full of energy, very knowledgeable, and very helpful. Anytime we need to stop he would stop, knew all about the national parks, and was always there to help us. FIVE STARS!!!!!⭐️. I highly recommend going with this company and especially having Sam as your guide guide.Posted on Tripadvisor
Jo LFebruary 7, 2026worth the investment for an unforgettable experience! fantastic experience end to end - exactly as described. Diana was an excellent communicator before the trip, and answered all our questions with very clear information. Payment was also very flexible. Peter Kato was a very attentive and knowledgeable guide throughout the 4 days. sorted out all the driving, paperwork and immigration flawlessly. He also always put our best interests at heart - we asked for a walking tour around Kisoro after our gorilla trekking which was an unforgettable experience (highly recommend). we also did the Botwa experience - another highly recommend itenary! the gorilla and golden monkey trekking in Uganda was phenomenal, definitely worth the investment! The lodges were very immersive, great food and service. highly recommened! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Posted on Tripadvisor
Companion11004206832January 30, 2026uganda trip I really enjoyed the trip to Uganda, especially in the gorilla forest. Peter helped me a lot, like a friend. They also helped me climb Mount Rowenzori. It was very fast, almost 5 days. It was a unique mountain with rock climbing and glacier climbing.Posted on Tripadvisor
Dwhits125December 30, 2025Great Experience Trekking with the Gorillas We had a wonderful experience trekking with the Gorillas. Peter, our guide, picked us up promptly from the airport in Rwanda. He was with us for our time in Rwanda and was polite, friendly, knowledgable, and a careful driver as well. The whole tour was organised smoothly, from booking to airport pick up, hotel check in, gorilla orientation, trekking through the jungle and return to the airport. Peter was able to adapt to our last-minute changes to our aeroplane departure, which was greatly appreciated. An excellent trip all around!Posted on TripadvisorKoen66November 23, 2025Geweldige tour, goede organisatie en super sympathieke gids Veel flexibiliteit en klantgericht tijdens de voorbereiding om samen de best mogelijke tour op te stellen. Super gids en chauffeur. Erg goede keuze van hotels. Active African is zeker een aanraderPosted on Tripadvisor
KathryncbNovember 6, 2025Amazing East African Adventure! What an amazing East African adventure! Billy put together a fantastic 18 day itinerary and everything went off according to plan. Communication from beginning to end was seamless and coordination with Billy’s partner company in Tanzania was perfect. We enjoyed gorilla and chimp trekking, multiple parks in Uganda and Tanzania, a quick visit to Rwanda, superb lodges and stunning scenic drives inbetween. Ismael and Godwin, our outstanding guides and drivers, made sure we got to see the very best that East Africa has to offer. Their on the ground knowledge and expertise made for a wonderful trip.
Luxury Kenya Safari (Ol Pejeta Conservancy & Mara Naboisho Conservancy)
An expert-planned 8-day Kenya family safari for children aged 5–12. Private game drives in Ol Pejeta Conservancy, home to the world's last northern white rhinos, and the big-cat-rich Mara Naboisho Conservancy. Tailor-made and fully personal.
Overview of the 8-Day Family safari in Ol Pejeta & Mara Naboisho Conservancy
8 Days, Designed for Families with Children Aged between 5 and 12. The Safari Your Children Will Talk About for the Rest of Their Lives. There is a specific quality of silence that only happens in Africa. It arrives when your child locks eyes with a white rhino fifteen metres away, and the entire vehicle holds its breath. No one whispers. No one reaches for a camera. For a brief moment, the outside world fades away. This Kenya family safari is built around that silence.
Kenya is one of the great wildlife destinations on the African continent, and its conservancies, the ones beyond the crowded national parks, the private lands where vehicles are few and encounters are unhurried, represent some of the finest safari experiences anywhere in East Africa. This eight-day family itinerary moves through two of the very best: the Ol Pejeta Conservancy on the Laikipia Plateau, home to the world’s last two northern white rhinos and an extraordinary density of predators; and the Mara Naboisho Conservancy, a private wilderness adjoining the legendary Masai Mara, where the big cats move on open grassland and the afternoons feel like they belong to another century.
This journey is part of our Africa collection of tailor-made safari itineraries, with the same philosophy we apply to our Tanzania circuits, brought north into Kenya. It is designed specifically for families travelling with children between five and twelve, paced for genuine engagement rather than exhaustion, and built around camps that understand that a family safari works best when children are treated as adventurers in their own right, not passengers who need managing.
Every element of this itinerary is fully customised. Younger children, older teenagers, and multi-generational groups tell us who is travelling, and we will shape the journey accordingly.
Duration of this Kenyan family safari: 8 days
Number of People: Tailored According to your Interests
Starts & Ends: Nairobi to Nairobi.
Availability: All year round
Places to Explore in Tanzania: Ol Pejeta Conservancy (Laikipia), Maasai Mara National Reserve, Mara Naboisho Conservancy
Detailed itinerary for the 8-day family safari in Ol Pejeta & Masai Mara. (Day by Day)
Days 1–3: Ol Pejeta Conservancy: Rhinos, Predators, and the Laikipia Plateau
Arrival and the Drive That Sets the Tone
Your journey into Kenya begins at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, where our representative meets you personally not a driver with a sign, but someone who knows this route and can begin answering your children’s questions before you have even left the car park. The transfer to Ol Pejeta Conservancy takes approximately five hours, and on any other trip, that might sound daunting. Here, it is part of the experience.
The road north from Nairobi climbs through the Rift Valley escarpment and into the central highlands, past flower farms that supply European markets, through small towns where goats graze the roadside verges, and market traders set out their wares on coloured cloth. The landscape opens steadily as you gain altitude. Then, as you cross onto the Laikipia Plateau and the gates of Ol Pejeta appear, the snow-capped peaks of Mount Kenya emerge on the eastern horizon, a view so improbable and so magnificent that children press their faces to the window and adults reach for their phones.
The Conservancy: Wildlife, Conservation, and Living History
Ol Pejeta is not a national park. It is a private conservancy of 90,000 acres of diverse habitat managed with a conservation mandate that has made it one of the most important wildlife sanctuaries in East Africa. This distinction matters enormously on a family safari. There are no queues of vehicles around a lion sighting. There are no fixed routes. Your guide drives where the wildlife is, stops for as long as the moment demands, and approaches encounters with the unhurried confidence that comes from knowing a landscape intimately rather than navigating it by rote.
The conservancy holds the full suite of the Kenyan wildlife experience: lion, cheetah, leopard, elephant, buffalo, and both black and white rhino. Game drives here move through riverine forest, open grassland, and acacia scrub, with each habitat demanding a different kind of attention from your guide and a different kind of patience from your children. On a well-paced safari, children are far more patient than most parents predict.
The Northern White Rhinos: An Encounter Unlike Any Other
Nothing else on this itinerary and very few wildlife experiences anywhere in the world carry the weight of the visit to the endangered species enclosure at Ol Pejeta. Two female northern white rhinos live here: Najin and Fatu, the last of their subspecies on earth. Their male counterpart, Sudan, died in 2018. These two animals represent the final chapter of a lineage that has existed on this planet for millions of years.
The rangers who care for them are extraordinary human beings: deeply knowledgeable, visibly devoted, and gifted at communicating the complexity of conservation to visitors of any age. Children listen to them with a focus they usually do not demonstrate in classrooms. The story of how scientists are working to preserve the northern white rhino’s genetic material and potentially bring the subspecies back from the brink is told here with honesty and hope in equal measure. Families consistently describe this visit as the most powerful hour of the entire trip.
Guide note: The best light for the rhino visit is mid-morning, after the first game drive. Ask to combine it with the canine anti-poaching unit demonstration; the dogs find hidden family members with startling speed, and children are absolutely delighted by the challenge of hiding well enough to beat them.
The Anti-Poaching Unit: Dogs, Rangers, and Real Stakes
Kenya has fought hard to protect its wildlife from poaching, and Ol Pejeta is at the forefront of that fight. The conservancy’s canine anti-poaching unit trains specialist dogs to track human scent across the bush, intercepting poachers before they can reach the animals. The unit is one of the most educational hours on safari, not because it’s didactic, but because it’s thrilling. The rangers run a hide-and-seek demonstration in which children (and game adults) attempt to conceal themselves in the bush while the dogs are sent to find them. The dogs are unfailingly faster than expected, which produces exactly the combination of surprise, laughter, and quiet understanding of how these animals serve a vital purpose.
Evenings at Camp: The Fire Circle and the African Night
The camp at Ol Pejeta has been chosen for its family configuration: eight tents in total, one of which connects two en suite sleeping spaces through a shared central lounge. After an afternoon drive when children have filled their notebooks or their phones with the day’s sightings, the campfire in the evening is where the safari becomes a story. Guides join you if you want them to. Sundowner drinks are served as the skies take on the colours that only this latitude produces. Children recap the day in the way only children do: with the total, unedited honesty of people who have not yet learned to be selective about wonder.
Accommodation Options.
- Tambarare Camp, an A&K Sanctuary: Tambarare Camp, an A&K Sanctuary, is an elegant and intimate safari camp set within the wildlife-rich Ol Pejeta Conservancy, offering refined comfort, privacy, and immersive encounters in one of Kenya’s most important conservation areas.
- Sweetwaters Serena Camp: Sweetwaters Serena Camp is a stylish tented safari camp set within the renowned Ol Pejeta Conservancy, offering comfortable accommodation, sweeping views over a busy waterhole, and front-row access to one of Kenya’s most diverse wildlife and conservation areas.
Days 4–7: Mara Naboisho Conservancy: Big Cats, Open Plains, and the Masai Mara Ecosystem
The Morning Flight North
Breakfast on day four is eaten with a particular quality of anticipation. The bags are packed. Mount Kenya, a constant presence on the horizon throughout your Ol Pejeta days, appears one last time as you are driven to the airstrip. The chartered flight south and west to the Mara Naboisho Conservancy takes roughly an hour, long enough for the landscape below to tell its story, the Laikipia Plateau giving way to the Rift Valley, the valley floor rising to the Mara escarpment, and the grasslands spreading out below you in every direction as the aircraft descends.
The Mara Naboisho Conservancy is 50,000 acres of private wilderness bordering the Masai Mara National Reserve, which means it sits in the heart of one of the world’s outstanding wildlife ecosystems. Naboisho operates with a strict low-vehicle policy: a maximum of 57 vehicles across the entire conservancy, compared with the hundreds that can be found in the national reserve at peak season. For families, this feature is not a luxury detail. It is the difference between watching a cheetah hunt in silence, just your vehicle and the grass, and watching it in a convoy. Our combined African safari planning team selects Naboisho precisely because its low-density model delivers the quality of experience that families remember and return for.
Big Cats and the Art of Patient Watching
The Mara ecosystem holds one of the highest concentrations of lions in Africa. Resident prides have territories within the conservancy, and guides who work in Naboisho regularly build relationships with specific animals over the years, knowing individual lions by the pattern of their whisker spots, which leopard uses which fig tree, and where the cheetah coalitions hunt in the early morning light. This depth of knowledge transforms a game drive from a wildlife-spotting exercise into something more like wildlife literacy.
Children absorb such information quickly. By the second day in Naboisho, most are beginning to read the landscape themselves, looking at the direction of a giraffe’s gaze to locate a predator, watching oxpeckers on a buffalo’s back to estimate where the herd has been, and noticing the difference between alarm calls. The Naboisho guides we work with, among the best in Kenya, don’t lecture. They ask questions. They wait for children to arrive at their own conclusions. They understand that a child who figures out why the wildebeest is nervous learns something that a child who is told the answer does not.
Night Drives: The Nocturnal Safari
A night drive is one of the privileges of a private conservancy that most national parks do not offer. After dinner, when the camp’s generator has settled to a hum and the bush is filling with its sounds, your guide loads the vehicle with red-filtered torches and drives into the dark. The nocturnal Mara presents a completely different world, with aardvarks traversing ancient paths, leopards patrolling their territory beneath a starry sky, and bushbabies frozen in the torchlight with their enormous reflective eyes. By the fourth day, children who initially found conventional game drives slightly repetitive transformed into dedicated safari obsessives during the night drive.
A Visit to a Maasai Community
The Maasai have coexisted with the wildlife of the Mara for centuries, and understanding that relationship, the way a people can live alongside lions, manage cattle within the same ecosystem as elephants and buffalo, and read the landscape in ways that have taken modern conservationists decades to begin to learn is one of the most intellectually generous things a family safari can offer. We arrange our Maasai community visits through years of built relationships, not through a tourism package. You will meet warriors, elders, and children. You will see how a homestead is constructed and why. You will hear singing that belongs entirely to this landscape. And your children will come away with something that no wildlife documentary can transmit: the understanding that Africa is not a backdrop. It is a home.
Ask the Maasai elders to explain the age-set system the way Maasai men move through structured life stages from junior warrior to senior elder. It is one of the most coherent and sophisticated social structures in the world, and children grasp its logic and fairness with surprising ease.
Days at Camp: Rest, Rhythm, and the Viewing Deck
Not every hour in Naboisho needs to be a game drive. The camp has been chosen partly for the quality of simply doing nothing, sitting on the deck in the midday heat, and watching zebras make their way to a salt lick while a cool drink sweats in your hand and the grass shimmers in the distance. Junior ranger programmes in the afternoon provide children a structured wildlife education in the bush, just beyond camp. Sundowners are taken at a different location each evening: a kopje, a riverbank, an open stretch of plain, so that every evening feels distinct. Meals are served under the stars, with no walls between you and the night sounds of the Mara.
Accommodation Options.
- Asilia Naboisho Camp: Asilia Naboisho Camp is a refined and intimate safari camp set within the wildlife-rich Naboisho Conservancy, offering authentic bush luxury, exceptional guiding, and a crowd-free safari experience in one of the Mara’s most exclusive conservancies.
- Hemingways Ol Seki Mara Camp: Hemingways Ol Seki Mara Camp is an intimate, upscale safari camp set in the exclusive Naboisho Conservancy, offering understated luxury, wide-open Mara views, and a quiet, crowd-free safari experience rich in wildlife encounters.
Day 8: Final Morning and Departure: Nairobi.
The last morning of a Kenya family safari is its own kind of experience. There is a final game drive at dawn, shorter than the others but sharper the way last things always are. Children who began this trip asking whether they would see a lion now scan the horizon with the fluency of people who know how to look. The drive back to the airstrip is quiet in the way that follows something real.
A chartered flight returns your family to Wilson Airport in Nairobi, followed by a private transfer to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for your next journey. The flight takes approximately an hour. The journey home takes considerably longer, not in distance, but in the adjustment required to re-enter ordinary life after eight days in which the world was reduced to its essential and most extraordinary elements.
What you bring home cannot be weighed or photographed. It is the specific gravity of an experience that changed how your family understands the world it lives in and the very strong likelihood that this is not the last safari you will take
What’s Included?
✔️ Accommodation (luxury camps & lodges)
✔️ All meals as per itinerary
✔️ Park entry fees & conservation charges
✔️ Game drives in a 4×4 safari vehicle with a pop-up roof
✔️ Professional English-speaking safari guide
✔️ All transfers (including airport pick-up & drop-off)
What’s Not Included?
❌ International flights
❌ Optional activities
❌ Travel insurance & visas
❌ Tips & personal expenses
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Why Families Travel Africa With Us
Our name reflects our roots in Tanzania: the Serengeti, the Ngorongoro Crater, and Tarangire, but our scope is the full breadth of East and Southern Africa. The same expertise and personal approach that we bring to our Tanzania safari itineraries apply to every Kenyan circuit we plan. We are not a booking platform. We do not aggregate options from a catalogue and present them as recommendations. We know these guides personally, have walked these conservancies, and have placed families in these camps and followed up when they returned.
When you plan a family safari with us, you are speaking with someone who can tell you that Tent 4 at this camp has the best morning light for watching the hippo pool, that a particular guide is exceptional with children under eight, and that the airstrip approach to Naboisho in the late afternoon produces a view of the escarpment that is worth arriving specifically for. Such knowledge is the kind of detail that transforms a good safari into the one your family talks about for decades.
We also plan multi-country East Africa journeys combining this Kenya circuit with a Tanzania extension in the Serengeti or Ngorongoro, a gorilla trek in Uganda or Rwanda, or a beach close in Zanzibar. The full continent is available for your family. Tell us what you want to feel, and we will build the journey.
Frequently Asked Questions: Kenya Family Safari
What is the minimum age for a Kenya safari with young children?
Most private conservancies in Kenya, including Ol Pejeta and Mara Naboisho, set their minimum age at five years old, and this age is the age we consider the practical lower threshold for a safari of this type. Children of five are old enough to sustain attention through a game drive, to follow a guide’s instructions on wildlife safety, and to form genuine memories of what they encounter. Younger children can travel to Kenya, but the safari experience itself is less meaningful for them and more demanding for the adults. Families with children under five are best placed in more resort-style lodges with wildlife viewing from the property rather than extended drives. Children between five and twelve are, in our experience, the ideal safari companions: old enough to understand what they are seeing and young enough to be completely, uncynically astonished by it.
When is the best time to take children on a Kenya safari?
Kenya’s private conservancies are excellent year-round, but the two periods we recommend most strongly for families are June through October and January through March. The long dry season, June through October, produces the clearest game-viewing conditions: vegetation is low, animals congregate around permanent water sources, and the Masai Mara ecosystem in July and August sees the northern movement of the Great Migration, with wildebeest crossing the Mara River in their hundreds of thousands. The experience is objectively spectacular, and children respond to it with an intensity that surprises even parents who have been on safari before. January through March is the green season, with lower visitor numbers, dramatically photogenic landscapes after the short rains, and the company of resident wildlife without the migration crowds. Families who want a quieter, more intimate experience often prefer this window. We avoid April and May, when the long rains make road conditions difficult and many camps close.
Is it safe to take young children to Kenya on safari?
Kenya is a well-established, mature safari destination with an excellent safety infrastructure for family travel. Ol Pejeta and Mara Naboisho, the conservancies on this itinerary, operate safely with guests of all ages, thanks to their private management and professional staffing. Camp boundaries are clearly managed, guides are trained in wildlife safety protocols, and the relationship between conservancies and local communities is one of longstanding cooperation rather than tension. Standard precautions apply to any travel in sub-Saharan Africa: malaria prophylaxis is essential, sunscreen and hydration require active management, and food hygiene at the standard of camps we recommend is high. We provide every family with a comprehensive pre-departure health and safety briefing, and our in-country contacts are reachable throughout your trip. The fundamental safety profile of a well-planned Kenya family safari is strong.
What makes private conservancies better than national parks for families?
The difference between a private conservancy and a national park is the difference between a private dinner and a restaurant ‘s peak service. Both involve excellent food, but one allows for an entirely different quality of experience. National parks in Kenya are open to all vehicles, which means that at peak season, popular sightings attract a queue of twenty or thirty vehicles. Private conservancies restrict the number of vehicles and licenses, meaning that on a game drive in Naboisho, you may be the only vehicle at a sighting for thirty minutes, an hour, or the entire duration of a cheetah hunt. For children, this is transformative: the difference between watching wildlife through a forest of camera lenses and watching it as if you were genuinely alone in the bush. Private conservancies also permit night drives and bush walks, which are not available in most national parks. For families seeking a more immersive experience, a private conservancy itinerary is the only option worth considering.
How do I know if a safari operator genuinely specialises in family travel?
The question to ask any safari operator is not ‘Do you do family safaris?’ The answer is always yes. The questions that reveal genuine expertise are more specific: Which guides do you work with in Naboisho, and what is their experience with children under ten? What is the tent configuration at this camp for a family of four, and where is it positioned relative to the main area? What happens if one of our children is unwell on day three? Who do we call, and how quickly can we reach a medical facility? What age-specific activities are available at each camp, and how are they structured? A specialist will answer all of these questions immediately and in detail. A generalist will answer the first and equivocate on the rest. We know the answers because we have lived them and placed families in these camps with these guides.
Start Planning Your Kenya Family Safari Today
This itinerary is a starting point. It represents eight days of work that has successfully helped dozens of families before yours and produces the exact kind of experience described in the introduction to this page. But it is a template, not a fixed product. Your family is specific: your children have personalities and interests and tolerances that are their own. Your travel dates have implications for wildlife and weather. Your definition of luxury: more active, more restful, more remote, and more connected, is yours alone.
We want to hear all of that. The more you tell us about your family, the better we can build a journey that fits you precisely. A Kenya safari planned well is one of the finest things you can give your children and one of the finest things your children will ever give you back.
Get in touch to begin planning we respond personally within 24 hours. Contact our team →
We are safari specialists, not a booking engine. The conversation we have with you before you travel is as important as the journey itself.
