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All our safaris to date have been through specialist agents, but I’m looking at Lake Nakuru and Lake Naivasha plus Diani Beach and it does seem reasonably DIY. The higher-end lodges don’t appear to go through OTAs but most publish rates. However I don’t know if the safari specialists get better rates.
From my experience it’s the lodges/camps that do all the local organising work in terms of the transfers and safaris, so it’d just be a question of any Safarilink flights and booking with the lodge directly.
Unless I am underestimating the value add of a safari travel agent.
That (plus Treetops) was the safari I took to Kenya in 1988. Feeling distinctly old.
Have you put those higher end lodges into Trivago incase an obscure OTA covers them? Also, I seem to recall the two places we stayed were under some kind of joint ownership/management, so is that another option?
Of course if you use a local agent then even if you are paying a bit over the odds, you have a local contact and you’re hopefully directing money into the local economy.
We did Kenya DIY in summer 2023 – Masai Mara, Mount Kenya (not the actual mountain) and Diani Beach. We booked Masai Mara and Diani beach direct with the same chain so they included return Safarilink flights from Nairobi Wilson at our request and arranged that as well as transfers to the airport (dirt strip). We booked directly with the hotel as well for Mount Kenya.
I have a trip report on here, that might help, from when I had a 3 week safari in Kenya, Uganda & Rwanda in august 2024, All DIY.
I have a trip report on here, that might help, from when I had a 3 week safari in Kenya, Uganda & Rwanda in august 2024, All DIY.
Got it – https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/kenya-and-uganda-safaris/
Take a look at Kinondo Kwetu on Diani Beach. Beautiful resort, great facilities, all rooms are individual and the staff are very caring. The chef will make whatever you want if you don’t like anything on the menu. We stayed in 2022, I doubt it has changed.
In 2005 I stayed at Ol Ari Nyiro. This thread prompted me to look it up, it is now called Mukutan Conservancy but the photos on its website and google are how I remember it.
It was DIY although not by me personally. On the drive from Nairobi my friend had also booked to stop overnight by Lake Nakuru – but when we arrived there, the building was deserted and the sleeping area was infested with mosquitoes and bugs.
With no way of contacting the person it was booked with, we had to drive around in the dark looking for somewhere else to stay. When we found one, they wanted more shillings than we had left, but accepted three £1 coins for the difference! (We didn’t have enough shillings because we were going to pay the lodge in USD cash and they had also offered to exchange more USD at a good rate)
Just adding to the thread specifically about Lake Nakuru and a local travel agent has described it as what Da Kidz would say is “ain’t all that”. Seems like the flamingo numbers are not as they once were.
We did one last summer (2 young kids, 2 adults).
We had an airbnb just off Diani Beach, it was ideal. 2 mins walk to the beach, it came with a chef (basic cook), I think most come with this. We used Diani as our base, our Safari guys picked us up from there as well. Worth noting it was a 6hr drive to get to the lodges.
This was about 15 years ago now, but we crossed into Kenya on a bus from Uganda without having made any arrangements whatsoever.
We arrived in Nakuru late in the afternoon, walked into a reasonably upscale hotel, and booked ourselves in. The hotel put us in touch with a local safari tour operator who came straight away and arranged a tour for the following two days, with the night in between spent in a lodge inside the safari park.
No idea if it would have been cheaper or more expensive to have arranged everything in advance. But it is possible to do on the spot.
At the time we saw lions, zebras, elephants, gazelles, giraffes, warthogs and plenty of flamingos. It was fantastic.
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