“Nyika” means “Large Plains or Great Plains,” and Mara Nyika is the perfect sister camp to Mara Plains in Kenya. It rings with the romance of the vast open plains of East Africa from a time when light canvas flapped in the light breeze across those plains as wildebeest and zebras call to each other and at twilight, “Simba,” the great lion’s roar across the Nyika.
Typical of the Maasai Mara’s ancient Nyika is the flat-topped Acacia kirkii trees. The Dereck Joubert designed guest suites take advantage of these umbrella thorn tree’s shade. While the camp is in a valley, actually straddling a small stream, the suites are set up high under the tree’s canopy to offer guests awe-inspiring views out over the bush.
Many may think of Mara Nyika as a treetop camp, with the suites' walkways to the main area giving a feel of a treehouse under canvas. However, the camp’s ethic and inspiration are still one of exploration and adventure - a sense of impermanence in this ever-changing world.
Privacy in this camp is the key to understanding it. Privacy to live, think, explore, be romantic, and be pampered – all the while with one of the most spectacular backdrops Africa can provide.
Mara Nyika, located in the private and exclusive 20 000-hectare Naboisho Conservancy, is unique because it allows guests to explore the conservancy and further afield with safari drives into the Maasai Mara Reserve. Guest’s stay enables us to support over 500 Maasai families with a sustainable livelihood through the payment of conservation fees, which ultimately ensures the conservation of the wildlife in this vital corridor of the Maasai Mara eco-system.
Many Mara Nyika’s guests spend a few days here before extending their safari to either our Mara Expedition or Mara Plains Camps. Combining these camps ensures a more comprehensive wildlife experience as guests explore all three wildlife areas: the private Olare Motorogi and Naboisho Conservancies and Maasai Mara Reserve. Each wildlife experience from our camps is unique and offers different Mara faces, which is an unbelievable bonus.
Game drives (day & night) take place in some of the Mara’s most coveted vehicles. Each of the camp's Toyota Land Cruisers is open-sided, canopied and customised for photographers (fold-down screens, raised roofs, photographic bars, multi-plug invertors). With just four to six guests each, the Cruisers also have fully-stocked fridges stocked with drinks and snacks. No two days are the same on safari. Drives typically start at sunrise, returning for lunch and depart again in the mid-afternoon before returning just after sunset. On other days guests can go out all day, deep into the Reserve or Conservancy with a packed breakfast and lunch. Very often, our safaris will continue into the night, a possibility because of our location on a private conservancy. Night drives are particularly prolific in the Naboisho Conservancy, and while they take patience, sightings commonly include lesser known nocturnal mammals and even lion and hyena hunts.
Each of Mara Nyika’s guest tents comes with a pair of high-quality binoculars for guest use as well as a professional camera set, including a camera body and lenses. Photos will be downloaded to a memory stick on guest’s departure.
Hot-air ballooning over the Masai Mara is available at additional cost, and is a truly stunning way to experience the landscape and an unforgettable sunrise.
Great Plains is first and foremost a conservation organization that uses eco tourism as a tool to sustain conservation programs. We even coined a new name for what we do – “Conservation Tourism”. We define it as the use of quality led tourism experiences that are environmentally sound, with the benefits going specifically into making the conservation of an area viable and sustainable.
It is important to us that this is done without any negative influence on the land, on any species that uses that land, or, indeed, on any individual animal. We do not do conservation by triage, killing some to save the rest, because this is a defeatist and disrespectful way of interacting with nature.
Our model takes stressed and threatened environments, surrounds them with compassionate protection and intelligent, sustainable management, and funds them with sensitive, low-volume, low-impact, tourism. Communities are an intrinsic part of this model and benefit directly from it. The final piece of the puzzle is you – our clients and guests – who pay to visit the camps we create, and through doing so, become our valued partners and agents of positive change.
Our philosophy is grounded in the fundamental appreciation of the good in life… Good people, good staff, good decisions, good things we share and enjoy, but most of all we try to extend that “goodness” to our interactions with you, with wildlife, with nature and with the local communities which so depend on them
