Balloon Safaris and Scenic Flights

A unique hot air balloon safari or charter flight experience allows you to view the diverse habitats of the Masai Mara National Reserve and the amazing assortment of wildlife from a unique bird’s-eye view.

Hot Air Balloon Safaris

Guests are picked at the Mara Siria Camp in the early morning hours. The balloon takes off at dawn – lifting up as the sun rises and floating in whichever direction the winds of the morning take you. The pilot can precisely control the altitude of the balloon: sometimes flying at treetop height, sometimes lower, offering a unique perspective and great photographic opportunities of the wildlife below. At other times the pilot will ascend to see the enormity and wonderful panorama of the Masai Mara.

The flight is shared with other guests and takes about one hour followed by champagne (well, an excellent sparkling wine), and a full English breakfast prepared and served in the bush in ‘Out of Africa’ style with bone china, linen table cloths, King’s silver etc.

After receiving your “ballooners certificate” you will be dropped back to the Mara Siria Camp.

We partner with high experienced, fully certified Air Operators with balloons of the highest international standards and baskets ensuring the highest levels of passenger safety and comfort at all times.

Scenic Flights in a helicopter

In cooperation with HCEA we offer scenic flights over the Masai Mara in a private helicopter. Enjoy the “Out-of-Africa” feeling and shoot your own aerial photographs of the Mara and its inhabitants. At request doors can be removed to create ideal photographic conditions.

A one or two hours flight starts with a low level flight over the mara river outside the park, climbing the Oloololo Escarpment and following it all the way south to the Serengeti border over the wilderness area of the Mara Triangle, meeting up with the Mara River again and following the River up stream to complete the circuit.

A two and a half hours flight can bring you additionally to Homa Bay – Landing at Ruma National Park with possible game drive to see the rare Rowan Antilope and White Rhinos. Take off and flight to Rusinga Island Resort for lunch  and back to Masai Mara via Nyakweri Forest.

A special experience is also our one and a half hour Wildlife Conservation Tour – an active participation in conservation by looking for known elephants (mostly bulls and matriarchs) which are collared and where we have the real-time coordinates. Objective will be to have a very close look at the elephant for injuries , behaviour and verify that the animal is fine and in good shape, including of taking close-up pictures.
After this we will fly to the Mara Elephant Camp, reporting the sightings and getting a tour of the projects operations, their camp set up and the Elephant monitoring programme by one of their Rangers.
This will be of great assistance to the elephant project and a valuable contribution to conservation.