A carefully paced 6-day route through Amboseli, Lake Nakuru and Maasai Mara, using exceptional lodges chosen for their positions, food and guiding. 5 nights on safari, priced on request.
Amboseli - Lake Nakuru - Maasai Mara
About this safari
The route opens in Amboseli — great elephant families beneath Mount Kilimanjaro — and works through 2 further destinations over 6 days. It stays within Kenya; the final proposal will confirm transfer times and the balance between travel and game viewing. Accommodation is at the luxury standard: premium camps and lodges where the accommodation is part of the experience. At this level the camps are as much a reason to travel as the wildlife: limited suites, exceptional food, private decks and guiding of a standard that changes what you see. Like every safari in this catalogue, it is priced on request rather than sold at a published rate, because park fees, permits, group size and contracted accommodation all change the figure.
Day by day
Written out in full before you book, so you can see exactly how the days are paced and where each night is spent.
Day 1
This planning outline starts in Nairobi and continues towards the first destination; the collection point, time and transport are confirmed in the final proposal. The road south from Nairobi runs towards the Tanzanian border through increasingly dry country, and the last stretch across the Amboseli plains is dust-coloured and almost treeless. Then the landscape does something unexpected: out of that parched ground rise permanent green swamps, fed by meltwater filtering underground from Kilimanjaro, and elephants are standing in them. The open, almost treeless terrain gives Amboseli long sightlines and makes it one of the best photographic parks in Kenya. Morning drives work the swamp edges where elephant, buffalo and hippo gather, while the dry lake bed shimmers and distorts in the heat further out. If the cloud lifts off Kilimanjaro — most likely in the first and last hour of daylight — the mountain dominates everything. The catalogue suggests a premium camp or lodge here. The exact property, suite and services remain subject to availability and quotation.
Overnight: Amboseli
Day 2
Time in Amboseli is best spent at the edges of the day. The middle hours bring heat, glare and fine volcanic dust; the first and last hours bring low gold light, active animals and the best chance of a clear mountain. Your guide will plan around that, heading out early, returning to rest through the worst of the heat, and going out again as the light softens. Amboseli's elephants are the most closely studied in the world, monitored continuously since 1972, and the families here are relaxed around vehicles in a way that makes for exceptional viewing. Drives follow them between the swamps, where they feed belly-deep in water with cattle egret riding their backs, and the open plains they cross in long processions. Among them are some of the last genuinely big-tusked bulls left in East Africa. A luxury stay is proposed for this night, with the final property and arrangements confirmed in writing.
Overnight: Amboseli
Day 3
The route then continues onward, leaving the grasslands behind, the day's driving heads for the Rift Valley floor and the compact park that surrounds Lake Nakuru. It is a shorter transfer than most on a Kenyan circuit, which leaves useful time for an afternoon game drive before the light goes — and the afternoon is when rhino most often move out onto the open lakeside flats. A morning here has a different character from the open savannah parks — tighter, greener, more enclosed. Your guide will work the lakeside tracks first while rhino are still out grazing, then climb through the woodland where colobus move in the canopy and the view opens out over the whole basin from the cliff viewpoints. This outline assumes the catalogue's premium standard. No named camp is guaranteed until the quotation confirms it.
Overnight: Lake Nakuru
Day 4
This travel day carries the route onward, the approach takes you across the floor of the Great Rift Valley and up onto the grasslands that stretch south to the Tanzanian border. It is a long drive, broken for lunch and leg-stretching, and it does the useful work of showing you how the land changes — from dense highland cultivation to the open, lightly wooded country where the great herds can move freely. With a whole day in the reserve there is time to go further than the popular circuits. Your guide can push towards quieter sectors where vehicle numbers thin out and sightings are shared with nobody, returning through the afternoon as the light softens. The middle of the day is often spent with a packed lunch under a tree near the river, watching hippo shift and resettle in the shallows. The suggested standard is luxury. Citrus will identify the available property and contracted services before confirmation.
Overnight: Maasai Mara
Day 5
Game drives cover genuinely different country within a short distance. The Musiara marsh draws elephant and buffalo to permanent water, the open grassland of the central plains is where cheetah have the room they need to run, and the broken ground towards the escarpment holds different prides again. Between sightings there is the sheer breadth of the place — grass running to the horizon under an enormous sky. Today is given over to the reserve, and how it unfolds depends on what your guide finds. Radio traffic between vehicles helps, but the best mornings often come from reading tracks and working a hunch. Lion are the most reliably seen of the big cats here; cheetah favour the open ground where they can use speed; and leopard, though present in good numbers along the watercourses, still ask for patience and a bit of luck. The catalogue suggests a premium camp or lodge here. The exact property, suite and services remain subject to availability and quotation.
Overnight: Maasai Mara
Day 6
This outline leaves the final morning available for the confirmed transfer plan. The reserve gives up its last sightings on the way to the gate, and the drive out through the grassland is a slow, unhurried end to the time here. Giraffe browse along the track, zebra drift across ahead of the vehicle, and the plains look much as they did on the first morning — except that you now know what is living out in them. Nairobi is the working end point, with the final transfer stated in the written proposal.
Safari ends
Where you stay
Accommodation below is the suggested standard for this package, taken from the Citrus catalogue. Where an entry describes a standard rather than a named property, we confirm the exact camp or lodge with your quotation. Named properties are suggestions and are substituted with comparable alternatives if they are unavailable for your dates.
Source catalogue listing
Tortilis Camp + The Cliff + Bateleur/Cottar's
This is reproduced exactly from the catalogue. The written quotation will allocate nights and confirm each available property before booking.
These are planning examples, not confirmed inclusions for this package. Your written quotation will confirm exactly what is included.
The quotation will identify every separate cost before you confirm.
Before you ask
The catalogue sets the route and travel standard, but it does not publish a fixed price or a contracted inclusion list. Citrus will prepare a written quotation for your dates, party and rooming, showing the exact transfers, activities, accommodation, meals, fees and permits before you confirm.
No. It is suggested accommodation from the source catalogue. Availability and any proposed alternative are confirmed in the written quotation before a booking is made.
No. Cloud and weather can obscure the mountain even when a route is timed well.
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