Kenya · Maasai Mara
Kenya’s Maasai Mara: Olderkesi Conservancy wildlife and Cottar's Safaris stays, curated by Exclusive Villa Collection.
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Kenya · Maasai Mara
The Maasai Mara is Kenya’s legendary savannah: open plains, private conservancy land, and wildlife density that still rewards travelers who want guiding depth over a crowded viewing deck. Exclusive Villa Collection publishes the corridor through Cottar’s Safaris on the Olderkesi Conservancy: Cottar’s 1920s Camp for classic tented safari living, and Cottar’s Bush Villa for exclusive-use families and private groups.
Days move between game drives on conservancy and reserve edges, walking and cultural experiences when the house calendar allows, and evenings that return to mess-tent lamps or a private villa deck facing the Mara and Serengeti horizon.
Olderkesi lies in the southeast of the Mara ecosystem, bordering the Maasai Mara National Reserve and running toward the Tanzanian border and the Serengeti. Conservancy land means fewer vehicles, off-road driving with the guides’ judgement, walking and night drives where the rules of the reserve would not allow them, and income that flows to the Maasai landowners who protect it.
Cottar’s 1920s Camp suits couples and first safaris, with the honeymoon tents set apart, while families take the two-bedroom family tents. Cottar’s Bush Villa suits multigenerational groups and friends who want their own house, pool and guide; it is part of Houses for Generations. Both camps sit in our Wild Frontiers collection, and our Journal piece on private safari camps in East and Southern Africa compares the Mara with the Okavango Delta and the Namib. More on the country in our Kenya guide.
Why visit
Featured properties
Houses we know by name, the ones we would open for this landscape.
Olderkesi Conservancy, Maasai Mara, Kenya
Cottar's classic Maasai Mara tented camp on Olderkesi Conservancy: eleven vintage-style suites, dedicated guiding, and plains light, personally curated by Exclusive Villa Collection.
Olderkesi Conservancy, Maasai Mara, Kenya: private hilltop villa with Mara and Serengeti outlook
Cottar's exclusive-use Maasai Mara villa: five en-suite bedrooms, 25-metre pool, private chefs and guide, on a hilltop facing the Mara and Serengeti horizon, curated by Exclusive Villa Collection.
When and how
Each season keeps its own calendar. We plan the transfer around it.
Best time to visit
July to October is the classic season, when the herds of the Great Migration move north from the Serengeti and cross the rivers; timing varies from year to year. January to March is dry and quieter, with calving to the south and strong resident game.
Seasonality
The long rains fall roughly April and May, and short rains in November. August and the Christmas weeks book first, and Bush Villa is reserved as a whole. Some camps close briefly in the long rains, so dates are confirmed early.
Airport / logistics
International flights arrive at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (NBO). Scheduled light aircraft leave from Wilson Airport for the Mara airstrips, and the flight to the Olderkesi corridor takes roughly an hour and a half with stops; a private charter is quicker. Small aircraft limit luggage to soft bags of modest weight, so pack light.
Month by month
Seasons follow the notes above. Average daily high and monthly rainfall for 2015 to 2024 from ERA5 reanalysis, via Open-Meteo.
Luxury experiences
Traveler questions
Ways of traveling
Begin with the collection that holds these houses and shores.
Collection
The most romantic stays we know: water villas in the Maldives, honeymoon tents in the Maasai Mara, a hot spring pool below Arenal and a suite that looks onto the Duomo.
Open the collectionCollection
Whole houses for the whole family: a hilltop Residence in Fiji, an exclusive-use villa in the Maasai Mara, a 1930s lake house in Austria, staffed villas in Bali, a Tuscan estate of private villas, a staffed sea-view villa on Capri, pool villas of four and five bedrooms on Hvar, three-bedroom Reserves on a Vietnamese bay, a four-suite villa above Lake Wakatipu, a sole-use house between Lake Hāwea and Lake Wānaka, and a garden haveli in Rajasthan.
Open the collectionCollection
Stays at the far edges of the map: Antarctica’s interior with White Desert, the Maasai Mara with Cottar’s, the Okavango and the Namib with andBeyond, the southern Kalahari at Tswalu, the Ngorongoro highlands at Gibb’s Farm, Ranthambore, the Utah desert, Alaska’s Tordrillo Mountains, the aurora skies of Canada’s Northwest Territories, Moyo Island, and New Zealand’s Ahuriri Valley at The Lindis.
Open the collectionFrom the Journal
Where we write about this place: the seasons, the houses and how the days are best arranged.
Journal · 6 min read
Seventeen cottages and two farm houses among the gardens of a coffee plantation on the Ngorongoro Crater’s forested slopes: the farm we choose to begin, pause or end a Tanzanian safari.
Read the storyJournal · 6 min read
A lake house in Austria, a hilltop Residence on a Fijian reef, a staffed villa in Bali and a house on the Maasai Mara: where three generations travel well together.
Read the storyJournal · 6 min read
Cottar’s in the Maasai Mara, andBeyond Sandibe in the Okavango Delta and Sossusvlei in the Namib: private camps for a first safari or a fifth, and when to go.
Read the storyRelated destinations
Landscapes that sit well beside this one.
Destination
Kenya with Exclusive Villa Collection: Olderkesi conservancy safari in the Maasai Mara with Cottar’s, and Sirai House, a private home on Laikipia’s Borana.
Destination
Okavango Delta floodplains, private concessions bordering Moremi, and Exclusive Villa Collection’s Botswana stay through andBeyond Sandibe Okavango Safari Lodge.
Botswana
Botswana’s Okavango Delta: private-concession wildlife, Santantadibe Channel light, and andBeyond Sandibe Okavango Safari Lodge.
Plan My Trip
Tell us the season, the company, and the feeling you want to keep. We will write back with a considered path, not a link to a search.
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