Elewana Loisaba
Tented Camp
Elewana Loisaba Tented Camp, on the escarpment above the valley in Laikipia.
At Loisaba the view does the introduction for you. Everything after it happens slowly, which is more or less how I photographed it.
The camp sits on the edge of an escarpment, and the drive in gives nothing away. Then the ground drops and the valley is simply there, wide and green, with Mount Kenya somewhere in the haze on the far side. Someone was already waiting with a cold drink. Nobody talked about luggage or rooms for a while. We just stood at the edge and looked.
Twelve tents, a dining area, a bar and a pool that sits right at the edge of the drop. Everything faces the same direction, so wherever you sit, the valley is part of the room. Elewana has three camps within Loisaba, yet it never felt busy. There was always a sense of space, both in the camp and out on the conservancy.
The tents are wonderfully generous. Canvas, wood, warm colours, a desk you actually want to sit at, and a terrace large enough to spend an afternoon on. The whole front of the tent opens towards the valley, so the landscape is always there, even from bed.
Coffee on the terrace, with the whole valley still waking up.
You come back from a morning drive meaning to rest for an hour, sit outside instead, and suddenly much more time has passed than you intended. The view keeps changing with the light.
The staff were incredibly warm and welcoming, and nothing about it felt formal. Our guide became a huge part of those two days. Going on safari with him felt more like going out with a friend than being guided by someone I had only just met.
Two nights, and somehow the leopards kept appearing. Loisaba gave us one beautiful encounter after another: leopard, rhino, elephants, giraffe, and even a tortoise slowly making its way across the road. What stayed with me was the feeling of having time to watch and photograph each encounter rather than simply move on to the next.
Walking straight towards us, in no hurry at all.
And then a tortoise, slowly making its way across the road.
Loisaba is 58,000 acres of Laikipia, and the scale is difficult to understand until you are in it. The kopjes are what I keep thinking about: huge rounded rocks rising out of open country, sometimes looking as if they belong to another world entirely. This was the part of Loisaba that made me know I wanted to come back.
Two nights is not long. It was enough to know that I had barely started looking. I left Loisaba already thinking about what I would photograph differently next time, what I had missed, and where I wanted to spend more time. It is a place I need to come back to.
Elewana Loisaba Tented Camp, Kenya.