Plan your safari

“If you ask old Africa hands to name the best guides, Cottar appears at the top of every list.”

Condé Naste Traveller

Plan your safari

Nearly a century since 1919, Cottar's Safari Services has been organizing bespoke safaris to Africa for discerning travelers and African specialist travel agents.  The service provides advice on where to go, develops personalized itineraries, and organizes expeditions to far flung places, accompanied by our hand-selected professional safari guides.  Many of our safaris have been written about in classic and contemporary Africana and safari history books.

We can organize a breadth of African experiences - from month long remote adventure expeditions to unexplored South Sudan to honeymoon safari and surf trips to family eco-lodge and cultural visits. We are in the business of making lifelong memories for our guests, providing just the right amount of adventure, adrenaline, elegance and comfort. Safaris can be organized in mobile tents, at our award-winning Cottar’s 1920s Camp in the Masai Mara, or in our private Bush Villa combined with other camps, lodges and locations in East Africa.

For safaris and trips that include properties outside East Africa we work with Royal African Safaris to create a meticulous and highly personalised itinerary for you.

Cottar’s Safari Service
Email: bookings@cottarsafaris.com

Royal African Safaris
Email: info@royalafrican.com
Tel: 1-877-337-4176 or +1-416-915-4145

Guiding Quality

Our guiding style is different from other safari operators in that we emphasize the quality not the quantity of the wilderness and wildlife, the emotional intelligence of the guide to become your friend in a short time, and to have our guests appreciate and join the pace of the wilderness. This is why we have invested in the best guides in the country; every one of them carefully handpicked by Calvin Cottar. We have the highest number of gold professional standard guides within one camp and all of our guides are chosen for their unique skill set, great personalities and a full understanding of the Cottar’s guiding ethos.

Since Chas Cottar’s days, the quality of safaris in Kenya has changed as tour companies sacrifice adventure for convenience, becoming over-itinerized and limited to congested big name parks with no room for the flexibility that always was the vital essence of the original safari. Calvin and Louise and the Cottar’s team work hard to keep the vital essence of safari alive, evoking the light, the sounds and the unchanging atmosphere of Africa.

Our promise to you – on our family honour – is to give you a life changing and wonderful safari experience, and ask only that you enter our world with openness, oceans of patience and willingness to trust our expert guides.

Cottar children walking with a representative of the Maasai community

Cottar children walking with a representative of the Maasai community