A day on safari

Most days on safari start at dawn.

You wake to  the gently splish splosh of hot water being poured into the canvas bucket outside you tent and a quiet “hodi” as a tray of hot coffee and freshly baked cookies are placed on your veranda.

As you head out to explore,  the sun creeps lazily over the horizon and golden light floods the savanna.

Steam gently rises off the rivers, predators warm themselves in the sun

Back in camp our crew are preparing a breakfast feast of porridge and fruit, muffins and eggs to order.


Sometimes we take breakfast out with us.

And then we fill our day with fun.

We’ll have lunch and a siesta back in camp or under a gorgeous tree.


In the early evening we’ll head out again looking for game,

or maybe letting off steam on a field filled with tommies.

As it gets dark we head for home.

After hot showers, we’ll gather around the campfire to catch up on the days events.

A candle lit dinner in the mess, lions roaring in the back ground.

and then to bed!

All images copyright Lowis & Leakey with thanks to Ninian Lowis, Dave Simpson, Ethan Kinsey, Lara Lowis and Tony Binks

Starlit Kilimanjaro, Amboseli


Its always a treat to see Mt. Kilimanjaro. Imagine our delight at seeing it  bathed in moonlight with stars twinkling above. Magic!

We were lucky,  the mountain came out from behind the cloud on most days that we were camped in Amboseli. One evening we enjoyed a traditional dance put on for us by the local community with the snowy peaks as a backdrop.

Images Copyright Ninian Lowis

Lions amongst waterlillies


Okovango Delta, Botswana

Lionesses hunting buffalo, Zambia.

On a safari in Zambia recently, Ninian and our guests watched a pride of lionesses hunting buffalo.

With dust billowing and the air filled with the sound of pounding hooves, the lionesses  drove the buffalo towards the car.

and with immaculate team work brought it down only afew feet away.

The short grass plains of the Serengeti

The southern serengeti was looking finer than it has in years. The rains had been fantastic  and the short grass plains were green and covered by hundreds of thousands of animals.
Here and there,  there were carpets of white, yellow and pink flowers. At times it looked like the zebra were standing in a fresh fall of snow as they stood in fields of  heliotrope.
We drove for miles across country and ended up at Naserua rock, sentinel of the Angata Kiti valley. There high on the cliffs there were falcons nesting, a little further along a mess of Griffons, also nesting.  At Ndutu we sat and watched the still mirror like water as the heat built for rain. Flamingoes, Ruffs, Stilts, trees, huge storm clouds, and even the distant Ngorongoro mountains were reflected with pin sharp clarity.

Ten memorable days in Tsavo

Tsavo is one of the oldest parks in Kenya and one of the largest in the world!  The east of the park is a vast wilderness of arid bush, broken by the glimmering copper of the Galana River with its lush green banks. Black lava flows reach fingerlike off the Yatta plateau.  Cooling swamps, Mzima Springs and the still waters of Lake Jipe interrupt the silvery grasslands in the west.   The game here can be incredible, we saw leopard, rhino, lion, hippo, enormous crocodiles, elephants stained red by the soil, klipspringers, plains game and a myriad of birds. A  favorite of Denis Finch Hatton and Bror Blixen, a safari here is not for everyone. The wilderness is vast and it takes great patience and many hours of searching to find all these wonderful creatures.

Have a look at more photographs from this safari.

Mara moments

Ninian has been camping in the  Mara for five nights with our guests.

They saw  a total of seven individual leopards in this time, including a mama with cubs.

The migration has begun.  This herd of early arrivals was at least 10,000 strong. All this long grass will soon be mowed short by all the zebras and wildebeest.

The Mara crocodiles are eagerly anticipating the arrival of the migrating herds of wildebeest and zebra.

A flying visit to Turkana and the Turkana Basin Institute

Migration in full swing

The migration this year began earlier than usual and the herds have waxed and waned over the past few months.

Several large rains storms recently have caused the animals to change direction resulting in large numbers in the Mara.  Three days ago Ninian and our guests found huge herds of wildebbest and zebra gathering to cross the Mara River.

Excited to watch the spectacle of a river crossing, they elected to sit and wait while the animals built up the courage to take the plunge. Our camp crew gathered the lunch they had waiting in camp and sent it out to them, and  four hot hours later  their patience was rewarded.

Fishing the Lakes of Mount Kenya

Keen fishermen,  inspired by Ninian’s fishing tales, our guests were eager to try fishing the huge trout in the high-altitude lakes of Mount Kenya.  The mountain is just over 17,000 feet high, wild and beautiful.

The most comfortable way to get there is by Helicopter.  Many of the “blue tarns” are at over 11,000 feet, icy cold and clear, fed by glacial melt water. These lakes were stocked years ago and some of the trout there are now enormous.

Only a few people have had the privilege of casting on these waters, and not all of them have had a prize to show for their efforts. Through a magical combination of the moon being in the right phase, luck and skill, our fisherman came back with a record catch including one fish that weighed in at 5lbs