A Luxury Masai Mara Safari with Angama Mara

It was Kenya’s vast savannas where African wildlife adventures were born. Safari is the Swahili word for journey. Though it was mostly about the thrill of the hunt when Europeans arrived on the continent for wildlife adventures in the 1800s, their expeditions gave way to the modern safari as we know it today. Kenya was the Africa of storybooks. And Angama Mara was practically born out of one of those storybooks with its creation inspired by the true story of Karen Blixen.

Africa is never not alluring, and a safari is often the trip of a lifetime for most travelers. Having been on more than one safari ourselves, it’s a trip we firmly believe is best experienced on a tailor-made luxury safari where you call the shots when it comes to your itinerary. Angama Mara delivers exactly that for a magical trip to Kenya’s Masai Mara.

Angama Mara: A Luxury Tented Safari Camp

Angama Mara is a special place. The independently owned and operated luxury tented safari camp is located in an idyllic setting in the Masai Mara National Reserve. It’s set inside the Mara Triangle, the stretch of land that makes up one-third of the Masai Mara National Reserve and is divided from the rest of the Masai Mara by the Mara River. The camp sits on an escarpment 1000 feet above the Mara floor.

But not just any escarpment – the very one where the stunning scenes in which Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton share a picnic and where {spoiler alert} Meryl Streep eventually delivers her eulogy after Denys’ death in Out of Africa. You couldn’t ask for a more romantic setting perfect for any couple or a safari honeymoon.

Looking out over the Masai Mara stretching as far as the eye can see, Angama Mara has magical birds-eye views of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley. Africa’s big game wildlife like elephants and giraffes, easily the easiest to spot from up at Angama Mara, wander the grassy plains below. The dark green forest that hugs the Mara River is easily spotted from Angama’s clifftop vantage point.

And though most mornings you’ll already be on the Mara floor as the sun rises and the Masai Mara comes to life, it’s worth spending at least one morning watching a sunrise from up at Angama. It’s like watching a dream sequence as the morning mist hangs low to the plains. The silhouettes of the hot air balloons and the unmistakable shape of acacia trees are dark contrasts as though an artist painted them on a blazing orange canvas.

It’s such a spectacular setting that you almost don’t want to leave Angama itself. Almost. After all, the Masai Mara lions, elephants, giraffes and hundreds of other species you’re about to discover all await in the magical Mara.

Angama Mara Activities

Of course, going on a Masai Mara safari is about seeing the big game animals that can only be found in Sub-Saharan Africa. While we can never get enough of game drives, there’s a whole host of activities you can do at Angama Mara if you don’t want to spend every waking second watching wildlife. From picking your own salad in their shamba to learning a Maasai dance over sundowners, Angama keeps guests entertained with many options for activities both at camp and in the Masai Mara.

Game Drives

Game drives, or what safaris are known as in Africa, are the highlight of any trip to Sub-Saharan Africa. Angama Mara guests have their own personal guide throughout your stay, and guides work with you to ensure you see and do what’s on your Masai Mara bucket list.

For some, that might mean checking off all of Africa’s Big Five: the lion, elephant, Cape buffalo, rhino and leopard. For others, the Masai Mara is a birder’s paradise with more than 470 bird species recorded in the Masai Mara National Reserve. For us, we want to see everything from the big to the small since we were previously lucky to check off the Big Five on safari in Tanzania.

But no matter what it is that you hope to see, Angama guides will do their absolute best to seek out those animals for you during your private Masai Mara safari. The guides are incredibly knowledgeable, and you’ll come away learning a lot about the behaviors of your favorite animals.

Masai Mara National Reserve is open from 6:30am – 6:30pm. While it’s best to enter the park right at 6:30am for wildlife viewing when the animals when are at their most active during the cool mornings, you design your time at Angama Mara.

You can plan full day game drives and take both a picnic breakfast and lunch to have in the park. Or opt for half day game drives with breakfast in the park. You can even go out on multiple game drives each day, as we did. We enjoyed leaving early and then returning to camp for lunch, some relaxation and maybe a midday nap, then heading out again for a late afternoon game drive.

We love the big cats, and the Masai Mara delivers plenty. There’s various resident lion prides and aside from the animals like zebra and impala which are everywhere, it’s lions that you’re likely to encounter most often on safari.

The key to catching lions doing something other than sleeping is to go out on game drives at sunrise or late in the afternoon. Otherwise, for the most part, lions sleep in the shade of trees for about 20 hours per day.

Those early mornings can be oh-so-worth getting up well before the sun. On our first morning at Angama Mara, we could hear a lion calling somewhere below the camp in the dark as we got ready to leave. Sounds at camp can be a bit deceptive though since sound carries across the Mara plains, and a lion’s roar can be heard up to 5 miles away. But just after we got down to the Mara floor, we saw a young male looking around and calling for his pride.

He’d walk a few steps, stop, call and look all around. The grass was so tall in the Masai Mara when we visited in late February because the wildebeest that help keep it short have followed the rains to Tanzania in the Great Migration. This makes life a little bit harder for the lions.

Finally we, or we should say our fantastic guide Jackson, spotted the rest of the pride. One of the other pride members climbed up on a log so he could see around better in the tall grass.

It was like something out of a movie as the eyes of the two young male lions met. The lion up on the log jumped down to re-join the other two and then all three rushed toward their lost pride member.

As the four young males came together again on the dirt road just in front of us, it was all nuzzles and playful pounces. They were clearly happy to be re-united. It was a Mara moment that just made your heart feel full.

One of the big cats we only got a brief glimpse of on our safari in Tanzania was the cheetah. Jackson drove us all the way to the Tanzania border where cheetah are often spotted hunting on the open plains.

The cheetah was hunting when we first found him. But the birds and warthogs he stalked lived to see another day. As it was getting quite hot at midday, the cheetah gave up and found a patch of shade under a tree to take a nap in.

It wasn’t a very restful sleep. There was a pride of lions sleeping under a tree only a few hundred meters from the cheetah. The cheetah slept with his head up to appear aware, and woke up often to check all around him. It’s when watching these behaviors that you realize just how hard life is, even for the big cats.

Even though the cheetah is the fastest land animal on earth, speed is its only weapon. Cheetah actually aren’t very strong and are at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to the African predators.

Rhinos were the other animal that we saw in Tanzania, but only from a distance in Ngorongoro Crater. Jackson knew of a mating pair and we managed to see them fairly up close. The mating pair doesn’t stay together for long, only about a week or two. Perhaps the Mara will have a black rhino calf in 15-16 months.

The pair wallowed in a mud hole and it was impressive how a pair of such large rhinos could practically disappear. It was also funny to watch the courtship, because even female rhinos want to be wooed a bit before getting down to business and making babies.

Elephants are a common sight in the Masai Mara. It’s the males that like to wander solo until they’re ready to find a mate. The herds are made up of mothers, aunts and the young elephants. The young males leave the herd when they are around 3 – 4 years of age.

The young elephants in the herd are particularly playful. They often play-fight and we were captivated by a group of youngsters wrestling and tussling while the moms and aunts grazed nearby.

We learned from Jackson that one of the signs of a male elephant being ready to mate is an elephant experiencing musth, a sort of thick tar-like secretion from their temporal glands. When bulls are experiencing musth, they’re more aggressive as their testosterone levels can increase up to six times that of other elephants. We steered clear of a large male on the move and clearly in musth.

It’s not just about the big game animals, either. One of our favorite sightings we never even expected was a neon green chameleon. It just happened to be crossing the road and it’s hilarious to watch them with their odd walk. They love to live in acacia trees and on the rare occasion you find one out in the open, they do this odd slow walk while rocking back and forth to attempt to mimic how a branch blows in the wind.

While the wildebeest have followed the rains to the Serengeti Plains on the constant cycle of the Great Migration in February, the crocs are year round residents of the Mara River. We visited one of the most well-known spots where the wildebeest cross the Mara River. It’s here that National Geographic, Animal Planet and photographers often capture the scenes of the wildebeests’ daring crossing. Sadly, many are snatched up by the waiting crocodiles.

It’s the Nile crocodile that lives in the Masai Mara, and here they are recorded to grow larger than anywhere else in Africa. After the salt water crocodile, the Nile crocodile is the second largest species of crocodile. In the Mara, they typically range in size from 9 – 16 feet in length and can weigh between 70 – 700 kilograms (150 – 1500 pounds).

We also saw dozens of types of deer and antelope, oodles of warthogs, zebra and paid a visit to one of the many hippo pools. Every game drive is a new adventure and you never know what you might come across.

Sundowners with the Maasai

These days sundowners are a tradition on African bush safaris. But as with everything on the luxury safari in Kenya with Angama Mara, simply enjoying a gin & tonic at the lodge while the sun sets simply won’t do.

Guests gather on Angama Mara’s sunset hill while the sun paints the sky with the soft brushstrokes of a watercolor. A drink in hand like the safari classic G&T, which was introduced to East Africa by the British armed forces in the 19th century, is a perfect way to end a day in the Masai Mara.

It’s not long before the sounds of Maasai songs fill the cool night. Their music is incredible and unique; they use no instruments and their songs are by voice only with a melody of clicks, calls and guttural vibrations. The tribe put on a show of songs, dance and a jumping contest before inviting us guests to join in.

It’s energetic and definitely works up an appetite as you jump and dance along with the Maasai tribe.

Bush Barbecue in the Boma

While it’s hard to choose a favorite of the experiences at Angama Mara, the weekly family-style bush barbecue is definitely a contender. As with the menus that offer a lot of variety when it comes to the food itself at Angama, the variety of dining locations available is impressive.

A lantern-lit path leads guests into Angama’s boma, which is typical of the Maasai tribes. They build a circular fence around their small community to help protect them and their cattle from predators and other tribes. Fires and lanterns lit up the picnic-style tables as night fell.

Some of the meal, like the salads and side dishes, is served family-style at each table. Guests have a choice for the main course, and it’s cooked to order and served to each guest individually. The bread, which is wound around long sticks and cooked over the grill, is also presented for each guest to pull off the stick.

Towers of mini desserts and cheese await back at the lodge, along with Kenyan coffee or tea, as guests arrive back from the boma.

The Shamba

The Shamba, which is Swahili for vegetable garden, is Angama Mara’s 1-acre veggie patch. The Shamba is just one of Angama’s sustainability practices that sets them apart from other Masai Mara safari lodges. It’s just a short walk from the main lodge and a lunch experience in the beautifully landscaped garden is a must.

One of the Shamba keepers meets you at the passion fruit arbor with a basket and scissors in hand. You don’t just enjoy a fresh lunch of salads and veggies in the Shamba, you help pick it while learning about the spiral design.

We didn’t even know so many types of lettuce alone exist. We cut different varieties, along with edible flowers and some veggies like peppers as we wound our way through the garden with Shamba keeper Ignatius guiding us.

A table is set up in the shade of the moth trees and it’s quite literally farm-to-table as everything you pick is washed and prepared right there. Some other dishes like the delicious carrot hummus that was so good I had to request the recipe, couscous and fresh baked bread and cheeses are brought in a picnic hamper from the kitchen to accompany the salad. It’s all served with a refreshing bottle of rosé wine and enjoyed between the Shamba and another lovely viewpoint over the Masai Mara.

Sunrise Hot Air Ballooning

One of the most magical things we did during our time at Angama Mara was a sunrise hot air balloon flight over the Mara River. It’s one of the activities offered at an additional cost, and it’s well-worth the price tag and extra-early wake-up call.

We’ve been hot air ballooning all over the world, including being married in a hot air balloon. It will be hard to top this experience of drifting low with a birds-eye view over hippos grunting in the Mara River, herds of elephants and giraffes grazing, and seeing some predators like lions and hyenas on early morning hunts.

The flight ends with a champagne bush breakfast near the landing site, where some curious giraffes came to check us and our breakfast out.

Angama Mara Camp

Angama Mara is a boutique luxury Masai Mara lodge with just 30 guest tents that is family-owned and operated. The stand-out difference from other luxury Masai Mara tented camps is their uniquely personal service.

The camp itself is made up of central guest area that includes a pool, photography studio where you can both rent equipment or get safari photography instruction from a resident in-house photographer, Maasai bead workshop and small gift shop divides the property into two guest camps. The two guest camps are known as the north and south camps, with 15 luxury tents each and their own lodges, kitchens and staff.

During the daytime, guests are free to walk about the entire camp on their own. At night, as the camp isn’t fenced, guests are escorted by guards as animals do wander in.

Angama Mara: The Main Lodge

Both the north and south camps has its own main lodge and library that is the center of everything. It’s here that guests dine, relax, enjoy a cocktail, meet their guides for activities and check-in and out.

Upon arrival, the team that will assist you during your stay including your camp manager and butler are waiting. The first order of business isn’t paperwork, but instead getting you a refreshing drink like a cold local craft beer, glass of wine or soda.

Out of Africa played a role in the inspiration for the owners creating Angama Mara, and guests can even watch Out of Africa in the library. There’s also a selection of books about Africa for guests to borrow during their stay.

Though it’s possible to have meals right in your own tent, we thoroughly enjoyed going to the lodge each evening. There’s rarely any other time that you see Angama guests out and about, but it’s at dinnertime when everyone returns and excitedly compares the day’s game drives and activities.

The food at Angama Mara follows the principle of being simple, yet delicious. The menu changes daily and offers a variety of selections, including vegetarian options, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We were impressed with the variety and quality, as it isn’t easy because of the remote location.

Angama is all about their guests, and offered up sharing recipes for some of our favorite dishes like the chicken and eggplant parmesan, spicy shakshouka and carrot hummus that we loved. Their collection of recipes could be a cookbook with over 400 recipes for everything from homemade sauces to desserts.

The Luxury Canvas Tents

The canvas tents at Angama Mara offer a luxury glamping experience with queen size beds, en suite bathrooms and game viewing opportunities right from your deck. The tents are canvas with some fixed walls around the en suite bathroom. Each tent sits on the edge of the escarpment and the entire front is glass with a deck stretching across the entire length.

There’s a queen size bed, sitting area, a desk equipped with a power strip for charging up all your cameras and devices and a separate bath and walk-in shower with 24/7 hot water supplied by Angama’s solar energy. The double vanity has outlets and Angama provides a hairdryer, eco-friendly soap flakes for washing out smaller laundry items in your room and locally made bath products.

There’s also some essentials like insect repellent and a flashlight supplied in the room, along with an air horn in case of an emergency and a cell phone in case you need to call your butler.

There’s also in-tent coffee and tea making facilities. A mini-bar is stocked to your preferences with water, soda, wine and alcohol like beer or gin as per the form you fill out prior to your arrival. There’s also some books guests are welcome to read while staying at Angama, and a pair of binoculars for rocking chair safaris from the deck.

Wifi is located throughout the camp, including in the guest tents. Though with views like this of the Masai Mara, it’s not hard to put down your phone and just take it all in.

The Best Time to Visit Masai Mara

The great thing about the Masai Mara is that it is safari destination teeming with wildlife year round. With the exception of the wildebeest that constantly follow a migration pattern following the rains from Kenya to Tanzania and back again, all other wildlife remains in the Masai Mara year round.

If you want to see the wildebeest migration, the best time to visit Masai Mara is from June to October when the wildebeest return. However, realize that this is peak season in the Masai Mara, with July and August being the busiest months. Rates will be higher and it can get a bit crowded.

October is considered one of the best months to visit Masai Mara National Reserve. The days are still filled with sunshine, the wildebeest migration is still going on, the grass is still short and the crowds have gone home.

The rainy season is actually noted by two rainy seasons: the long rains and the short rains. April is, on average, the rainiest month in the Masai Mara when the long rains return. May and August are also rainy months. The short rains come in November and December.

January and February are dry months, though short showers can still occur. The grass is tall during this period as the wildebeest returned to Tanzania by November, making smaller wildlife a bit harder to spot.

Masai Mara weather is dependent on the precisely where in the you’re visiting. Different climatic conditions consist throughout the national reserve. Generally, daytime temperatures average around 25°C/77°F year round and nighttime temperatures cool off to 12°C/54°F.

Know Before You Go

Our trip to the Masai Mara was in partnership with Angama Mara in order to bring you this story. However, Luxe Adventure Traveler maintains full editorial control of the content published on this site. As always, all thoughts, opinions, and enthusiasm for travel are entirely our own.