Stories from real places

Kenya Safari: What First-Timers Get Wrong About the Experience

Kenya's Masai Mara covers 1,510 square kilometres in the southwest, continuous with Tanzania's Serengeti, and the park fee alone is $200 per person per day — before you pay for a guide, vehicle, or somewhere to sleep. Most first-time safari visitors arrive expecting the sustained drama of BBC's Planet Earth: lions taking down prey, herds migrating in a visible tide, perfect light every morning. The reality is that 70% of a game drive is slow driving through empty plains with binoculars in hand. The remaining 30% — a single lioness walking to a waterhole at dawn, a cheetah with three-week-old cubs, a giraffe silhouetted against an acacia tree — is why people return to Kenya repeatedly. Understanding what you're paying for changes how you experience it.

Henrik Vinter