Roya Nikkhah: My wild horseback safari in the Masai Mara - The Times
I’m a great believer in Winston Churchill’s theory that “no hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle”. It’s why most of my mornings start with exercising the Household Cavalry horses in Hyde Park or galloping racehorses in Lambourn. A riding safari was a long-held ambition, so after months of training to ride a winner at York racecourse in June, I figured I’d be fit enough for a safari in the saddle. But could I survive a week without a hairdryer?
Heading to the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya with a group of friends, hairdryers were a distant memory as the propeller plane from Nairobi flew low over the Mara, our pilot pointing out dozing rhinos, giraffes, impalas and zebras as we approached the Mara North airfield.
Our host and guide for the week was Gordie Church, a softly spoken Kenyan who with his wife, Felicia, runs Safaris Unlimited. We were the first ride of their new season. “Welcome to the Mara. It’s looking beautiful at the moment, green and lots of game,” Gordie said, pointing out last night’s hippo tracks from our open-top Land Rover. Approaching the tented camp, he added: “This is good leopard country, you’ll hear them rasping at night.”
I could feel my shoulders relax as we arrived in Nkilenya, the first of our three camps for the week. Over a lunch of chilled avocado soup, freshly baked rosemary focaccia and plenty of rosé we learnt what to expect for the week ahead and how the camp worked. How not to fall down the “thunderbox” loos? Pass on the third tequila shot after dinner. “Beware of the safari ants,” Gordie said. “But snakes? Almost never.” That turned out to be fake news.
The tents, with twin or double beds dressed with Egyptian cotton sheets, feather duvets and cosy throws, were a welcome surprise. Website photos don’t do justice to the lovely little touches that make them so comfortable. Hot water bottles were tucked in every night while we tucked into dinner. Handmade soap and wild flowers decorated the washstands, where basins were filled with warm water each morning. Even the thunderbox seats are hand-painted with wildlife scenes, and the showers were blissfully hot.
Unpacked and changed for riding, we were allocated our horses by Felicia. The trip requires a minimum standard of “intermediate-plus”, fair enough for riding in big-game country, where you might need to gallop out of the way of lions, buffaloes and hippos. The horses were a range of breeds including Appaloosas, warmbloods, thoroughbreds and Arab-French-Somali crossbreds. Felicia gave us snippets about their characters: Blondie, the super-chilled quarter horse; Geronimo, “the best lion and leopard spotter — when he flares his nostrils, you know they’re near”.
Icene, a steady mare, was Madonna’s mount when the pop star came for a bespoke ride in northern Kenya with her son Rocco, her Malawi-born children and “quite an entourage”. Mine was Dali, a striking black Friesian-Boerperd cross mare. “She’s cheeky, full of sass, and she’ll pop a buck in the first canter,” Felicia warned. “She knows when she has a good rider and when she doesn’t. If she doesn’t like you she’ll dump you.” Dali and I had a lot in common. I knew we’d be friends.
We’d be riding for four to six hours a day, up to 19 miles, so an initial hour-long early evening ride into the Rift Valley to get a feel for our horses was an ideal induction. As a herd of impalas hopped around us I heard more about the Churches’ story and how Gordie’s grandparents moved from Cambridge to Kenya in the 1930s, establishing a mission station on the slopes of Mount Kenya. In 1971 his father Tony sold a set of golf clubs and bought three horses. So began Safaris Unlimited. We were a group of ten, but the Churches will take as few as two, the prices varying accordingly.
Riding past a lone Cape buffalo, and a hornbill perched on a rock silhouetted by the setting sun, Felicia told me how a horsey upbringing in Leicestershire led her to the polo fields of Argentina, then to Kenya 16 years ago to work as a guide for “this charming man” who later became her husband. Home, with their two children, is a conservancy on the slopes of Mount Kenya, 250 miles east of Lemek, which serves as a hub for their 30 horses, which are rested and schooled between rides. “What Gordie didn’t realise when we married was his bank balance would significantly decrease, but the quality of horses has significantly improved,” Felicia said, laughing. Horses are sourced from across Africa and beyond. Felicia’s horse, Machakos, named after the Kenyan racecourse, had retired from racing in Nairobi, while Gordie’s Appaloosa Quicksilver hadn’t much enjoyed life as a polo pony, and found his feet on safari. Every horse that comes to them is turned out for a year, free to run with the herd and acclimatise to wildlife before beginning safari training.
Back at camp we migrated to the well-stocked “mess bar” for campfire cocktails, looking out to a Kenyan sunset that no Instagram filter could enhance. Dinner was served in the candlelit dining tent, with a patterned draped ceiling and linen napkins. Roast beef, all the trimmings and rhubarb crumble were cooked to perfection in the solar-powered kitchen by Sarah Kabugi, who has been with Gordie for 20 years, and Francis Kikole, a crew member for more than 30 years who worked for Gordie’s father. Bedtime is when the Mara’s sounds really kick in, hippos munching and trudging between our tents while lions and hyenas called out nearby.
Our weeklong ride took us through two private conservancies: Lemek, which spans 20,000 acres, and Mara North, at 70,000 acres. The land is owned by the Masai tribe but isn’t open to the public like the Masai Mara national park further south. Over porridge, berries and a full English breakfast Gordie and Felicia outlined how companies such as Safaris Unlimited are “tourism partners”, working with the Masai to invest in the land and wildlife management with funds from privately run trips. The Masai have a weekly “landowners committee” where they meet with Gordie and other safari heads to discuss land management, raise issues and make sure that everyone is on the same page.
We explored the riverine forests and open plains of Lemek, cantering past wildebeests, zebras and topi antelopes. I’ve never felt more blissfully remote from my day job of royal briefings and palace drama as when I was up close and personal with a herd of Cape buffaloes, a flock of cattle egrets swooping overhead past the vast Aitong Hills. I marvelled at the scene through Dali’s razor-sharp ears as the herd sussed us out, noses in the air.
The scenery and wildlife are the trip’s obvious jewels in the crown, but two other gems are the Churches’ support guides Louis Roumeguere and Emma Badger. Our group gave Roumeguere, a French Kenyan who has worked establishing other camps across the Mara, the moniker “Louis little pants” (if you ever see his shorts, you’ll know). The enthusiasm of Roumeguere and Badger, a talented photojournalist and videographer from Malawi, for the Mara way of life and protecting it, and their boundless knowledge of wildlife, was infectious. Another joy was the option of riding as much or as little as you like. If any of our backsides felt saddle-weary there were 4×4 game drives with sundowner cocktails in tow.
The two “move days”, when the crew packed up the entire site and relocated to our next camp, started painfully early. But dawn wake-up calls were eased by tea, coffee and homemade cookies brought to the tents. As we rode out from Nkilenya, a family of baboons playfully approached to see us off. Elephants and giraffes meandered around us on the Lemek plains, munching balanite tree canopies into razor-straight lines as high as their trunks and necks could stretch.
Cantering across a plain, all was idyllic until another guest, Eliza Culloty, a plucky rider and cousin of the champion jockey Oisin Murphy, suddenly parted company from her horse, Zulu. Spooked by something, Zulu ditched her on the ground, right onto two previously hidden creatures we saw rise from the long grass and scarper. “The warthogs are out,” Felicia said with a laugh, going to check on Eliza. But they weren’t warthogs. They were lionesses. Luckily for Eliza they were not hungry ones. That, surely, was our drama of the trip. But 20 minutes later the horses stopped in their tracks, snorting. A black-necked spitting cobra, raised, rattled and not scarpering like the lions, stood its ground. Following Gordie and Felicia’s careful instructions to move slowly and give it a wide berth, we kicked on to a lazy picnic lunch and a snooze in the shade of the Olomai forest.
Riding on without drama towards the magnificent Siria escarpment, we arrived at our second camp in the Mara North conservancy on the banks of the Mara River. Campfire cocktails had a soundtrack of hippo pods splashing and honking away below us. Word reached camp that a lion pride was heard calling nearby, so we jumped into the 4x4s for an evening game drive before dinner. Seeing and hearing the Mara at dusk is special. Heads through the roofs, sweeping infrared torches across the bush, we spotted a fish eagle, giraffes, hyenas and side-striped jackals. Almost giving up on the big cats and turning for home, it was then we saw them: five lions dozing in a thicket, their bellies full. Putting on a torchlight show for his spectators, the dominant male slowly rose and strode out from the bush, roaring into the night.
The ride to our final camp, Kampi Ya Simba (Camp of the Lion), included a brunch stop under the shade of a giant fig tree. The horses grazed while an inquisitive elephant lingered near their pen, a scene so beautiful that I put my phone down and took mental snapshots. After a brunch of fruit salad, shakshuka and tamarillo juice the horses had a well-earned rest from the afternoon heat while we took a game drive to the nearby Nchoro Naibor (“Salty Stream”) area.
By our final morning ride only one longed-for sighting had eluded us. Cheetahs are critically endangered — there are about 50 in the Mara ecosystem — so we weren’t hopeful. Gordie slowly raised his hand and pointed to a raised rock on the plain. Stretched out on top, from an almost perfectly camouflaged vantage point, a cheetah eyed us up. Deciding we were friends not foe, it stayed put as we rode around the rock to marvel from every angle.
A dazzle of zebras decorated the plain as we approached the airfield, before our hosts waved us off into the Mara sky. I don’t remember ever having such a heavy heart at the end of a trip. But I knew it wouldn’t be long before Dali and I were galloping again. All recommendations within this article are informed by independent expert editorial opinion. This article contains affiliate links that will earn us revenue. Where a “Book now” button appears, it may direct you to our in-house travel agency, Times Holidays, or to one of our affiliate partnersRoya Nikkhah was a guest of Safaris Unlimited, which has six nights’ full board from £7,360pp on the Short Ride in the Mara itinerary (safarisunlimited.com), and British Airways, which has return Nairobi flights from £641 (ba.com)
