6-Day Ol Pejeta Nakuru Naivasha & Mara Conservation Safari

Your conservation safari begins with a morning departure from Nairobi, driving north through the Rift Valley highlands and Laikipia County to Ol Pejeta Conservancy, approximately two and a half hours from the city. Arriving at the conservancy, you check in to your lodge and enjoy lunch before an afternoon dedicated to Ol Pejeta’s extraordinary conservation experiences. A guided visit to the northern white rhino enclosure introduces you to Najin and Fatu, the last two northern white rhinos on Earth, protected around the clock by armed rangers in an ongoing effort to preserve genetic material for future reproduction efforts. The encounter is profoundly moving and represents one of conservation history’s most heartbreaking and determined chapters. An evening game drive through the conservancy’s 90,000 acres delivers excellent black rhino, lion, and buffalo sightings as the highland light softens.

Spend a full day exploring Ol Pejeta Conservancy with morning and afternoon game drives and a visit to the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary. The morning game drive targets the conservancy’s healthy lion pride and the black rhino population, the largest in East Africa, which is most active in the cool morning hours. The highland grassland and riverine woodland habitats support a rich diversity of wildlife including elephant, Grevy’s zebra, reticulated giraffe, and large herds of buffalo. The Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary, the only facility of its kind in Kenya, houses rescued chimpanzees from across Central Africa in a natural bush enclosure where you can observe these intelligent primates at close range. An afternoon game drive explores the southern sectors of the conservancy where cheetah have been reintroduced and where the dramatic backdrop of Mount Kenya provides an extraordinary photographic setting.

After breakfast at your Ol Pejeta lodge, depart and drive south approximately two hours to Lake Nakuru National Park in the Rift Valley. Arriving at the park gate, you enter and begin your game drive through the acacia woodland and along the alkaline lake shore. Lake Nakuru is one of Kenya’s most ecologically intense parks, with exceptional wildlife density in a compact and easily explored setting. White rhinos, often in groups of three or four, graze openly in clearings throughout the park, while the endangered black rhino is sought in denser bush. The lake shore delivers the famous flamingo spectacle, and the euphorbia woodland sector is the best area for leopard, which are frequently seen draped in the canopy of wide spreading trees. Check into your lake-view lodge for dinner overlooking the Rift Valley.

After a morning game drive in Lake Nakuru, depart and drive approximately one hour south to Lake Naivasha, descending the Rift Valley escarpment to the freshwater shore. Check into your lakeside lodge and enjoy lunch before an afternoon boat ride on the lake. Lake Naivasha is a Ramsar wetland of international importance, and the boat ride delivers close encounters with hippo pods that emerge to bask on floating vegetation mats, African fish eagles calling from tall fever trees, and dozens of waterbird species including pied kingfisher, grey heron, African spoonbill, and great white pelican. An optional guided walk on Crescent Island, a peninsula within the lake, allows you to walk among free-roaming giraffe, zebra, and wildebeest in a uniquely peaceful wildlife experience.

After breakfast at your Naivasha lodge, depart south and then west toward the Maasai Mara National Reserve, a drive of approximately four hours through the Mau Escarpment highland country. The descent from the highland plateau to the Mara plains is a beautiful transition as farms and forests give way to open savannah grassland and Maasai pastoral lands. Arriving at the Mara in the afternoon, the scale and wildness of the reserve is immediately impressive. Check into your camp and set out on an afternoon game drive, encountering the Mara’s legendary cast of characters including lion prides, cheetah, elephants, and the endless herds of wildebeest and zebra that make the Mara the most productive game viewing ground in Africa.

Rise early for a final breakfast at the Mara camp while watching the sun come up over the golden savannah, then begin the drive back to Nairobi completing your six-day conservation safari circuit. The approximately five-hour drive north gives you a final panoramic farewell to the Mara ecosystem and the Rift Valley escarpment before returning to Nairobi in the early afternoon, enriched by six extraordinary days of wildlife encounters and conservation insights.