Helicopter Safaris

East Africa has country a vehicle simply cannot reach, and a helicopter is the only honest way to see it. North of Baragoi the Suguta valley runs hot and empty; further on there are the crater lakes, the black lava fields, and Turkana with its jade water.

You fly low with the doors off if you like, put down on a ridge for lunch, and are back at camp for a shower before dinner. Pilots up here guide as they fly, and they know which gorge holds water in September and where the flamingo are this month.

Tanzania flies the same idea over different ground: Natron’s soda flats with their pink margins, the volcano standing over them, and the Rift wall falling away to the lake. A crater-country flight reads the whole landscape in an hour that would take days of road.

It also solves ordinary problems: the Mara to Laikipia in one hop, a day trip to Lake Turkana from a lodge you are already in, or the leg between the crater and the western Serengeti.

Good to know

• Charters are quoted by the hour on the machine, not per seat, so a group of four or six is what makes it sensible.
• Payload matters. Luggage is soft bags only and there is a weight limit per passenger, and we collect those figures before confirming.
• Weather turns a plan around: a route is a plan, and the pilot has the last word on the morning.