Porini Amboseli Camp, a slice of true wilderness

Our camp is located in the Selenkay Conservancy in Amboseli, a wild area that’s famous for big elephants. However, when our founder Jake Grieves-Cook arrived 30 years ago, elephants had all but disappeared. Jake realised that the key to protecting wildlife was to preserve their habitat, so he worked with the Maasai community to set up a conservancy. Now, we have up to 300 elephants here at a time. The conservancy is funded by guests staying in camp; every tent pays to protect 700 acres of habitat and we employ 95 percent of our staff from the local community.

As well as fantastic elephant viewing, Selenkay has a lot of lesser-seen species you don’t usually encounter inside Amboseli National Park, such as gerenuks and leopards. It’s an arid area but we have three waterholes that attract wildlife, two of which have platforms where you can enjoy picnics or sundowners while watching the animals. I was there recently and had an excellent sighting of a male lion with a female and her three cubs. The male is related to Marty, a famous lion who was born in Selenkay; our guides know all the lions by sight and work with researchers in the area.

Porini means ‘wilderness’ in Swahili and the whole concept behind our camp is to cause minimal disturbance to the eco-system. None of the structures are permanent and we have just ten, traditional canvas tents that are solar powered. What we’re trying to emulate is the safari camps of old, going back to the days when Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway visited Kenya. It’s all about being under canvas in an area full of wildlife, yet set away from the crowds.

We don’t stick to a rigid schedule at Porini, guests can head out for game drives whenever they like and dine in camp or have picnic meals. Being in a private conservancy means we can also offer activities like night drives, guided walks and visits to a Maasai village. Guests love meeting members of the community and getting an uncrowded wildlife experience. The area hasn’t changed much over the last hundred years and you’re able to get incredibly close to the big tusked elephants – you can go off-road within 20 feet of them – it’s a real highlight.