Kenya Diary: Elephants, Lions and a Cheetah Hunt with Africa Calling Safaris

By Safari News — Africa Calling Safaris, Partner desk, Nairobi · 15/10/2026

A recent journey with Africa Calling Safaris, organised by guide Nikos and his team, began with a small aircraft landing on a red-dust airstrip before guests settled into an intimate camp hosting no more than eight travellers. That scale shaped the entire trip, with pre-dawn game drives that felt private rather than crowded as the savannah turned gold under the first light. Travellers from Tbilisi or elsewhere in the Caucasus typically reach Nairobi via one connection through Istanbul or Doha before transferring onward to the bush camps by light aircraft.

The standout moment came on the third morning in Amboseli, where a herd of roughly sixty elephants crossed a dry lake bed beneath Kilimanjaro. A matriarch estimated at around fifty years old led calves barely waist-high alongside older bulls, prompting forty minutes of silent observation from the vehicle. Guides’ close reading of the terrain — broken twigs, distant dust, shifting wind — repeatedly led the group to wildlife.

The final four nights in the Maasai Mara brought even denser encounters. Within ninety minutes of the first afternoon drive, the group located a pride of eleven lions — two males, five females and four roughly three-month-old cubs — resting beneath an umbrella thorn. On the fourth day, a cheetah selected a Thomson’s gazelle from a herd of about two hundred, closing to thirty metres before a chase lasting under a minute, played out directly in front of the vehicle.

The operator’s careful choice of camps and experienced guiding left little room for improvisation, reinforcing the case for booking Kenya trips with operators who know the ecosystems well.

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