Photo by Alfo Medeiros on Pexels
🇰🇪 Kenya · Olkiombo area, Maasai Mara, Kenya
Photo by Alfo Medeiros on Pexels
🇰🇪 Kenya · Olkiombo area, Maasai Mara, Kenya
♨ Temperature
38°C
⛰ Altitude
1560 m
⚗ pH
7.2
💧 TDS
200 mg/L
🌊 Flow rate
N/A
📅 Established
Founded 1919 by Charles Cottar; current camp 1996
✓ Verified on 2026-07-22
Cottar's 1920s Camp is among the oldest continuously operated safari camps in East Africa, founded by the American hunter-naturalist Charles Cottar in 1919 and today operated by the fifth generation of the Cottar family in the Olkiombo area bordering the Maasai Mara National Reserve. The camp occupies a private 6,500-acre conservancy immediately adjacent to the reserve, combining classic safari-era aesthetics — canvas tents, Persian rugs, teak furniture, silver-service dining — with contemporary conservation and wellness programs. The camp's bush spa offers outdoor treatments using Maasai herbal traditions and locally sourced plant preparations, including outdoor solar-heated bathing facilities positioned to overlook the Mara ecosystem. Guests may bathe while listening to wildlife in the surrounding savanna — a uniquely East African thermal experience. The conservancy itself is managed for both wildlife and Maasai pastoralist coexistence, with a permanent veterinary clinic for wildlife, anti-poaching teams, and a Maasai scholarship program.
| Solar-heated fresh water | 0 mg/L |
| Maasai herbal preparations (traditional) | 0 mg/L |
The Maasai Mara ecosystem is the traditional territory of the Maasai people, one of the best-known and most politically engaged Indigenous nations in East Africa. The Maasai have maintained pastoralist coexistence with the wildlife of the Mara since at least the 15th century. Cottar's Camp's Olkiombo conservancy operates under a community partnership model with Maasai landowners, providing lease revenue that contributes to Maasai community development while maintaining wildlife habitat. The Maasai herbal medicine tradition — drawing on the extraordinary pharmacopoeia of the East African savanna — informs the spa program.
Cottar's 1920s Camp sits at the intersection of two defining East African cultural moments: the great safari era of the early 20th century (when figures like Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Roosevelt, and Karen Blixen defined the East African wilderness in Western consciousness) and the contemporary conservation model that has transformed the same landscape into a globally significant wildlife protection zone. The Cottar family's five-generation continuity at the same site provides unusual historical depth to a tourism experience.
The Cottar's conservancy is managed specifically to provide wildlife corridor between the Maasai Mara National Reserve and the Serengeti ecosystem in Tanzania. Anti-poaching, wildlife veterinary services, and coexistence programs with Maasai pastoralists are funded by camp revenue. Solar power and water recycling systems minimize the camp's resource footprint.
Phone+254 20 212 4426
Websitewww.cottars.com
AddressOlkiombo area, Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya