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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