Angama Mara

Angama Mara sits on the lip of the Oloololo escarpment, roughly 300 metres above the Mara Triangle, on the ground where the picnic scene of Out of Africa was filmed. Steve and Nicky Fitzgerald opened it in June 2015 as two separate camps of fifteen glass-fronted tents, each with a deck the width of the room and a red rocking chair for the morning view. Silvio Rech and Lesley Carstens drew on Maasai brickwork and the veranda houses of 1920s Kenya, and Annemarie Meintjes kept the interiors light and a little witty.

The lodge has a private entrance into the Mara Triangle, the quieter western third of the reserve managed by the Mara Conservancy. Game drives start below the cliff within minutes, and the tarmac airstrip, run by the Kenya Airports Authority, lies on the escarpment close to the camp. A solar-heated pool, a photographic studio with resident photographers, a fitness room, a Maasai beading studio and a working vegetable garden fill the hours between drives.

The Angama Foundation, funded through a contribution on every guest night, supports local schools, a clinic and the Mara Elephant Project. Wi-Fi reaches every tent and power runs around the clock, which matters when you are editing a day's photographs on the deck while the plains turn gold beneath you.