FEATURE
A Taste for Travel at 70! A Solo Escape to Cottar's 1920s Camp Janet Manuel An AirKenya booking, 40 minutes and an early morning – that is all it takes! Seamlessly you are transported from Wilson and a grey, damp November Nairobi to the Mara plains. A panorama of endless vistas, blue skies and herds of plains game. This is exactly how solo travel at 70 should be... and Cottar’s 1920s Camp delivered like dream. Enock and Giza were not only cheerful and welcoming as I stepped from my 12-seater set of wings, but they are both a tome of wildlife knowledge and expert story-tellers, skills in a wildlife guide that mark excellence. Cottar’s 1920s Camp is situated in the wildlife rich and private Olderkesi Conservancy, bordering the famous Masai Mara National Reserve and the vast Serengeti Plains of Tanzania. They are proudly part of “The Long Run,” a global membership organization which joins tourism with conservation. The Long Run 4Cs framework has been developed to protect the wilderness through a holistic balance of Conservation, Community, Culture and Commerce. The benchmark of success is attaining the prestigious Global Ecosphere Retreat status, and Cottar’s 1920s Camp is one of only ten properties worldwide to have gained this GER recognition. An early morning flight and a host of meagre meals alone at the TV meant that the tastes and tales that accompanied my bush breakfast beneath one of the many iconic sausage trees (Kigelea africana) in the Black Rock Valley were a delight.
40 | NDEGE NEWS |DECEMBER 2023 - FEBRUARY 2024
Morning Coffee
Before me, the plains were dotted with impala, wildebeest, Thomson’s gazelles and zebra. Elephants plodded gently across the horizon as I indulged in a full English breakfast, good conversation, a vista of ages and birdsong all around me; I immediately felt at peace.
looking topi and the more unusual smaller creatures; the leopard tortoise, the agama lizards bobbing on the rocks, banded mongooses going about their business and the many beautiful birds. My highlight, a lifer as they say: A rosy-throated longclaw!
If the tale is in the journey, then mine had only just begun as, over the next few hours, Enock pointed out the Coke’s hartebeest, the befuddled
To travel to Cottar’s 1920s Camp is to travel back in time, to be removed from the mundane and ordinary everyday life and be transported
