Cottar's 1920s Camp

The Hotel

Cottar's 1920s Camp sits on the Olderkesi Wildlife Conservancy — the 14,000-hectare private conservancy at the southeastern edge of the Maasai Mara National Reserve, on land the Cottar family has held under structured Maasai-community partnership since the late 1990s. The property is the heritage anchor of the Cottar family's East African safari operation — the family has run continuous safari operations across Kenya and Tanzania since 1919 (when American Charles Cottar arrived with his sons in colonial East Africa as a hunting safari operator), making the Cottar family the longest-running unbroken safari operator in East Africa across four generations and 106 years. The current property, opened in 2003, is the family's deliberate 1920s-revival camp — a structured period-restoration of the early-Cottar-safari aesthetic.

The 10 keys are individually free-standing tented suites in a deliberate 1920s-period architectural-and-decorative register. The tents are configured as 1920s-period 'safari tents' — extra-large canvas tents with brass beds, mahogany writing desks, period-Africana decorative inventory (vintage Cottar-family-photograph commissions across every tent, restored 1920s safari trunks, period-correct lighting), private outdoor showers, and the Cottar-family signature 'mounted Jeep' 1920s-revival outdoor sitting area. Categories run uniform-quality at approximately 80 sqm per tent; the named Cottar Family Suite (the Cottar-family's personal preserved 1920s-family-tent at 120 sqm with private outdoor sitting area) is the property's milestone unit.

Operationally Cottar's runs the heritage-safari-period register at the smallest-footprint scale. The all-inclusive standard rate covers all meals, all premium drinks, twice-daily game drives, and the property's signature single-day cultural programmes (the structured Maasai-village half-day with the Cottar-family-partnered Maasai community, the bush-walking half-day with the property's Maasai-spotter team, and the family's signature historical-Africana programme — the Cottar-family-preserved 1920s-period vintage-Africana collection that the family has assembled across the operation's century). The Cottar's-Library inside the central main building holds approximately 200 Cottar-family-historical safari publications, photographs, and journals.

What gives Cottar's the considered Maasai Mara position is the historic-safari heritage register at the smallest-footprint scale. The Cottar family's 106-year continuous East-African-safari operation gives the property a heritage-credibility that no other Maasai Mara safari operator can match; the 1920s-period architectural-and-decorative register is structurally unique in the contemporary East-African-safari market; and the Olderkesi Conservancy's structurally-private traversing rights give game drives the structural quietness of the surrounding private conservancies. For an anniversary trip that values the historic-safari heritage register, a literary or solo retreat that takes the Cottar-family-Africana cultural register as the daily anchor, or a multi-night East-African-safari that pairs Cottar's with a Sabi Sand or Tanzanian Selous second leg, Cottar's 1920s Camp is the most-considered choice.

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