East Africa Itinerary
Kenya Coast & Safari Combo
About This Journey
Kenya runs from the Mara grasslands to a coastline that has been trading with Arabia, Persia, and India for a thousand years — and the second half of that is what most safari itineraries miss. This journey gives five days to the wildlife and then flies you east to Lamu, where there are no cars, the streets are two metres wide, and the dhows still sail. Twelve days, and two civilisations, joined by a short flight.
What This Journey Holds
- Maasai Mara safari
- Lamu Island dhow sailing
- Watamu marine park snorkelling
- Swahili cultural immersion
Day by Day
Day 1:Arrival — Nairobi
Arrive in Nairobi and transfer to your hotel. The city sits high and cool, and the evening comes down quickly. Your guide meets you for dinner and a briefing on the two very different halves of the journey ahead.
Day 2:Fly to the Maasai Mara
A light aircraft southwest to the Mara, an hour of flying that takes you over the Rift escarpment and out across the grassland. Land at the airstrip, meet your vehicle, and go straight out — arriving mid-morning means you are in the ecosystem before lunch and can spend the whole afternoon in it.
Day 3:The Mara — Big Cats & Open Plains
A full day in the reserve. The Mara's lion density is among the highest anywhere, and the prides here are large, habituated, and utterly indifferent to the vehicle. Cheetah use the termite mounds as vantage points; leopards work the riverine forest along the Talek. Sundowners on a rise with the plains going amber in every direction.
Day 4:The Mara Triangle & the River
West into the Mara Triangle, the quieter, better-managed sector against the Oloololo escarpment. In migration season the crossing points on the Mara River are the day's whole business — long waits, sudden chaos, crocodiles. Outside it, the Triangle simply offers the best general game viewing in the reserve and a fraction of the traffic.
Day 5:Maasai Community & Final Mara Drive
A dawn drive, then time in a Maasai village or conservancy — a conversation about cattle, lions, grazing rights, and the conservancy model that now pays landowners to keep the wildlife corridors open. The afternoon is loose: a walk, a rest, a final drive as you choose.
Day 6:To the Coast — Lamu Archipelago
Fly east, via Nairobi, to Manda airstrip and cross the channel by boat to Lamu Island. There are no cars on Lamu. There is a donkey population of several thousand, a seafront of dhows, and a Swahili town continuously inhabited since the fourteenth century. The heat is thick and the pace changes within about ten minutes of arrival.
Day 7:Lamu Old Town
A slow walk through the UNESCO-listed old town with a local guide — coral-rag walls, carved mangrove-and-teak doors, inner courtyards built to catch the sea breeze, and a street plan that has not changed in six centuries. The museum, the fort, and the afternoon spent doing very little on a rooftop, which is the correct way to use Lamu.
Day 8:Dhow Sailing & Takwa Ruins
Out on a traditional dhow under sail, crossing to Manda Island for the ruins of Takwa — a Swahili town abandoned in the seventeenth century and now half-swallowed by mangrove, with a pillar tomb still standing at the mosque. Grilled fish on the sand, and the sail home on the afternoon wind.
Day 9:Shela & the Open Ocean
A day given over to Shela's twelve-kilometre beach and the water. Snorkelling, or a longer sail to Manda Toto for the reef, or nothing at all beyond a book and the shade. The dhow captains will take you out at sunset if you ask, and you should.
Day 10:South to Watamu
A short flight down the coast to Malindi and a transfer to Watamu, where the reef sits close inshore and the water is the colour that gets used in brochures and is, unusually, accurate. Settle in and swim.
Day 11:Watamu Marine Park & Gede
Watamu Marine National Park was one of the first marine reserves in Africa, gazetted in 1968, and the coral gardens inside it are in genuinely good condition. Snorkel or dive in the morning. In the afternoon, the ruined Swahili city of Gede — thirteenth century, abandoned without explanation, now standing silent inside a forest full of baobab and golden-rumped elephant shrews.
Day 12:Mida Creek & Departure
A last early morning at Mida Creek for the wading birds on the falling tide and the mangrove boardwalk, then breakfast and the transfer to Malindi or Mombasa for your flight. You will leave with sand in everything you own, which is part of the arrangement.
Make It Yours
This is where the conversation begins.
This itinerary is a starting point — a glimpse of what is possible. Tell us what draws you in, what you'd change, and when you'd like to go. We'll build something that belongs entirely to you.
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