Where you sleep

Safari Tent Stay

Name: A Thousand Sunrises
Address: Nairobi, KE
Telephone: +254 716 589 981

Camping, tented camp or lodge changes the price of a safari more than almost anything else. Here is what each one actually means on the ground, and how to pick.

Three levels

Canvas, or walls?

Camping

Our lowest prices

A proper dome tent on a public or private campsite, put up for you before you arrive. Mattresses and bedding provided, a camp cook travelling with the group, and shared washrooms. Simple, sociable and much closer to the sound of the bush at night.

Best for: younger travellers, groups on a budget, anyone who has camped before

Most booked

Tented camp

The middle, and our most booked

A permanent walk-in tent on a raised platform or concrete base, with real beds, an en-suite bathroom behind the canvas, running hot water and a veranda. Canvas walls, hotel comforts. Meals are served in a central mess tent or dining area.

Best for: most first-time visitors, couples, families with older children

Lodge

The top of our range

Solid walls, a swimming pool more often than not, air conditioning in the hotter parks, and a restaurant. Lodges are the easiest option in bad weather and the most comfortable for anyone with mobility needs.

Best for: families with small children, longer trips, hot-season travel

A night under canvas

What actually happens between game drives

AfternoonYou come back from the game drive to tea, and there is usually an hour of light left. Most camps sit where something walks past — a river, a waterhole, an open plain.
SundownDinner is early, often outside and often communal, because everybody is getting up at five thirty. Camps run generators or solar, and lights go down when the generator does.
After darkAn askari — a camp guard — walks you to your tent, and will walk you back if you need to move at night. This is not theatre. Buffalo and hippo move through camps after dark and you do not wander.
NightCanvas is thin, which is the whole point. Hyena, lion at distance, hippo grazing a few metres away, and birds from about five. Most people sleep better than they expect to.

What a tented camp gives you

A real bed, made up, with mosquito netting
An en-suite bathroom with a flushing toilet and hot shower
Full board: breakfast, lunch and dinner, with packed lunches on travel days
Power for charging, generator or solar, usually not overnight
An askari to walk you to your tent after dark

Worth knowing before you book

Wi-fi is in the main area if it exists at all, and rarely in the tents
Nights are genuinely cold at altitude — the Mara sits at about 1,500m
Camps are unfenced by design, so you follow the camp’s rules after dark
Air conditioning is a lodge feature, not a tent one

Camp names on every itinerary read “or similar”, because availability moves. We confirm the exact camp in writing before you pay anything.

Undecided?

We will quote the same trip at two levels.

Send us your dates and group and we will price it camping and tented, or tented and lodge, so you can see exactly what the difference buys.

Start planning WhatsApp +254 716 589 981

Sleep under canvas

Journeys that use tented camps

Tsavo West · Aberdare · Samburu · Lake Nakuru · Masai Mara

9-Day Grand Kenya Safari

Five contrasting parks in nine days: volcanic Tsavo, the misty Aberdare forest, arid Samburu, flamingo-fringed Nakuru and the open plains of the Mara.

From $2,184 per person

Itinerary Get quote