An Edinburgh Teacher’s First Safari Reaches the Mara River

By Safari News — Africa Calling Safaris, Partner desk, Nairobi · 16/10/2025

Updated 23 October 2026

Sarah Mitchell, a 38-year-old secondary school teacher from Edinburgh, travelled to Kenya with Africa Calling Safaris in August, closing a gap that had opened when she first saw a wildebeest crossing on television at age eight. The journey from Nairobi took four and a half hours by road, descending the Great Rift Valley escarpment — a 900-metre drop over roughly two kilometres — before opening onto the plains of the Masai Mara. Travellers connecting from the Caucasus typically route through a Gulf or European hub to Nairobi before continuing by road or light aircraft to the reserve.

Within twenty minutes of her first afternoon drive, Mitchell found a cheetah mother coaching three cubs to stalk Thomson’s gazelle, a species capable of bursts near 70 km/h over short distances. On her fourth day she witnessed a river crossing: the herd gathered on the Tanzanian bank for three hours before thousands entered the water within seconds, and crocodiles took several animals in view, consistent with the typical 1–3 percent loss rate recorded during major crossings.

Africa Calling’s client data from 2018–2024, drawing on more than 680 first-timer responses, shows 91 percent rating their trip as exceeding expectations and 73 percent returning within eighteen months. Pre-dawn departures, the firm notes, regularly mean temperatures of 8–12°C despite the daytime heat — reason enough to pack warm layers alongside binoculars.

Based on reporting by Safari News, the travel desk of Africa Calling Safaris (Nairobi), GTour’s partner for East Africa. Read the original there.