Review: Cottar’s Bush Villa, Kenya

Some trips you take for a change; others change you.  Cottar’s fundamentally changed me.

I first went in 2018 and hated it.  Absolutely hated it.  It was the final stop of a two-week stretch in Africa, and everything about it managed to annoy me, like an itch that could only be relieved by stabbing yourself in the testicles.  I decided, at that point, that no one should ever go on safari for two weeks again.  It’s too much.  But safari was not the issue.  No, it was Cottar’s.  It managed to be the equivalent of the end of Game of Thrones, which retroactively ruined everything that came before it.  Eight years of build-up, and then whatever-the-fuck-that-was.  Never again, I said.  I shall spare the poor citizens of Earth this trauma.

But then I say a lot of things.

So, against all logic, I returned.  Then I saw the place.  A major refurb—practically a rebuild—and against any logic at all, it has re-emerged as proof of one thing: it’s very annoying having opinions, since they can change.  Every fact has a half-life, and when the facts alter, so must the opinions.  I was left standing there holding a grudge with no evidence attached.

Pre-Arrival

I was not coming subtly.  I have never written a review knowing that the owners would be reading it through their fingers, like watching a horror film in which the babysitter has just decided to investigate the foul smell in the basement, the one where the bullied guy who just loved to dress up as a clown used to party with his Ouija board.  And his lucky cursed doll.

Before I arrived, the owner wanted a chat.  A chat.  That sounded like being summoned to the headmaster’s office.  To their credit, it was never to ask me not to write anything — simply to have a chat.  And hide the terror.  Calvin Cottar then called me “the most feared man in luxury travel”, which is genuinely the nicest thing anyone has said to me.  I have thought about it every day since.  I will think about it at my funeral.

Getting There

You land at Nairobi, cross town to Wilson, and get on something small.  Thirty-five minutes later you’re in the Mara.  If the gods are smiling, you come down on Cottar’s own airstrip, which is twenty minutes from camp.  I was met off the vehicle by Louise Cottar.  As one is.

Setting

Cottar’s sits on 7,608 acres in the south-eastern corner of the Mara, pressed against the Tanzanian border, with the Serengeti on the other side of it.  They’re the only operator on the conservancy, and 6,000 of those acres are theirs alone.  Well, kind of.  The land is leased, not owned — the Cottar’s Wildlife Conservation Trust pays 6,650 Maasai households for the privilege.  It took them over a decade of negotiation, and it is the single most useful thing anyone in this part of Kenya has done in fifty years.

Some context, before you read another word.  I arrived here directly from Loirien Mara, a wonderful property, where I spent roughly a thousand words ranting about the state of the Mara.  Because the Mara is a crime against humanity.  It is defining enshitification — a boiling pot of piss, if you will, that will eventually cover everyone standing near it, at which point nobody will go at all.  Until then: more vehicles, more camps, more reasons to avoid.

Cottar’s is none of that, as it’s private land.  And even the park side they access is too far from the main gates and airstrips for anyone to bother with.  You cross the boundary and still don’t see anyone.

From the moment I got near the property, what struck me was the absence.  An hour on the way in without passing a single other vehicle.  Earlier that same day I’d been in the National Park, where it is car, then car, then car, then a cheetah that I could only view at an angle so contorted I might have accidentally been demonstrating something from the Kama Sutra.

On a five-hour morning game drive here, I saw two vehicles.  Both were Cottar’s.

House and Home

I came to stay in the Bush Villa, believing myself to be too important to hang with the riffraff down in the main camp, which is a very short drive away.  It’s five bedrooms, and gives you everything you need to never leave.  Due to some recent damage to one of the roads, that drive takes you through the back of house.  So the grand arrival at a house costing fifteen thousand dollars a night begins with a tour of the laundry.  Not the best entrance ever devised.

And then, honestly?  Really not bad.  Considerably better than I was braced for. Actually, leagues above it.  Like believing you’re setting yourselves up for the opening scene of Trainspotting with the swimming in shit, and then finding yourself with no swimming, nor shit, and all that glorious crystal-clear blue water.  And heroin.  Yeah, that – exactly like that.

You come in and the dining room opens up onto a view that does most of the heavy lifting for you, and the recent refurbishment stands proudly.  It’s a multi-floor property, with bedrooms spread across both floors, and the dining room being the sole focus of upstairs.  Downstairs is a large, spacious living area with curved white sofas.  Beside it is a bar that opens onto a terrace with a fire pit.  Further along, the entrance and lobby, acting like a snug.  The dining room sits above the living room and is visible from it, so the whole place feels connected without anyone being forced to sit in each other’s laps.

The master suite is on the top floor, which I would be staying in.  It’s the largest of the rooms, with a desk, living area and its own balcony.  Nowhere to put luggage, though, which means my suitcase lives on the floor, which means at some point someone tidies it away somewhere logical.  I hate that.  My luggage is meant to sit open like an exploded piñata for the duration of the stay.  That’s the system.

My advice: take the room directly beneath it.  It’s smaller, yes, but it’s more modern, it has the only bath in the house, and — crucially — it is much cooler.  For the other rooms, the difficulty with the Bush Villa is it’s not really designed for groups, as some of the rooms are significantly smaller than others, so you’re gonna have to inevitably murder your friends as a sign of dominance.

This is not your old Cottar’s that seemed to be made of plywood and whatever was recently discarded in the Mara River.  There are marble baths, beautifully designed wooden sinks with more marble, elegantly designed chandeliers, and evidence of an interior designer with more than zero working eyes.

And a twenty-five metre lap pool.  Unheated.  So it’s a beautiful, generous, thoughtfully designed twenty-five metre reminder that you are not going to do that today.  But, 25m…I guess I can forgive them for not needing a data centre’s worth of energy to heat it.  The area around it is lovely — dining table, loungers, a bit of boules, a spot to lose an afternoon — though it’s a shame there’s no view to speak of.

There’s then a viewing deck, right beside the bar, and a lower-deck with a hot tub, which takes three hours’ notice to prepare.  Three hours.  You have to want it.  You have to plan the hot tub the way other people plan a christening.

There is a treatment room with two beds.  There is no gym at the house, and the one down at the main lodge looks like it was blown in by a passing hurricane and no one’s had the heart to move it.

Quirks

If anything says “afterthought,” it’s a toilet with a safe randomly on the floor beside it.  Just in case you needed to store that heroin before you empty your bowels?  Let’s keep that analogy going.  And the same toilet has a window only partially screened, so if you stand, you can make eye contact with someone approaching the room.  Oh, how I waited for that intimate moment.  I know male loneliness is an issue; I did not expect the intervention to come from the plumbing.

They told me the shower takes three to four minutes to warm up.  They were not lying.  They were, however, being optimistic about the destination — it never quite reaches a temperature you’d describe as warm, more a sort of acknowledgement of heat.  Mornings here are cold, so sprinting out of bed may be the reason there’s no gym up here.

Then there’s the wind.  All night, rattling around the house, moving things, testing doors.  And once you’re awake you may as well begin my new hobby, which is walking around a dark room at midnight looking for the fourteenth light switch.

Look, no one is coming here and mistaking this place for Arijiju, but it’s really rather nice.

Foraging Ahead

There’s a kitchen on premise with your own team.  Lunch is family style with no choice, which is a policy I’d normally object to on principle, and then lunch arrived: a Thai-inflected take on a spread of salads that was brilliant.  Only the pork tenderloin let it down.  Also I do not eat onions, and onions turned up anyway, bastards.  Dinners were much more varied, and all lunches and dinners were fantastic.  Bush breakfast is basic and uncooked, though I did learn on this trip that Maasai men do not cook.  I knew my spiritual home was Kenya.

Family Businesses

If you’re coming to a property with a family name over the door, you want to actually feel some personality.  Here, you get more than that. It’s very family-focused in that the family did not want to leave me alone. Warm to the point of inescapable. Calvin Cottar became my personal guide, conservationist and cultural warrior; Louise, my dedicated host. I’d like to tell you this is standard; I suspect everyone was on their best behaviour for his Lordship’s arrival. But consider my ego thoroughly stroked by some lovely people. And seeing the passion counts for a lot more than reading some bullshitty brochure from some faceless overlords.  Overall, I spent hours with the owners, who are divorced and still work together, which is either a masterclass in professionalism or the longest hostage negotiation in East Africa.

And then there were the turndown gifts, which escalated nightly.  It started with a water bottle — engraved, cool as hell.  I own roughly a million branded water bottles and so never take any home, but regret that choice here.  There was a lovely bag too.  Each evening, something better.  I began doing the maths on how long I’d need to stay before there was a Land Cruiser parked in the bedroom.  Or become a Cottar myself, marrying into the bloodline and owning the camp.  It was maybe only 24 hours away.

Activities

This is the point of Cottar’s. This is a meaningful camp with meaningful contributions, made by people who mean what they say. It’s all about what you can do here, which if you tried it in the rest of the Mara would see you either eaten or arrested.  I cannot overstate how different this concession is to the Triangle.

The list is properly deep: walking, running, hikes, archery, foraging, stargazing.  Plenty of focus on culture, and I don’t say that lightly, because “cultural experience” in this industry usually means someone trying to sell you a beaded necklace made in China.  Here it’s Maasai warrior school, a village visit, actual conversations, and a walk with a local medicine man who has you tasting plants that would be sold for ninety dollars a bottle in Notting Hill.  Also, the printed itineraries and menus are elegant and quietly classy, the sort of small thing that costs very little and lifts everything.

One evening, the fire roaring, an old Maasai hunter-gatherer telling his stories.  It is genuinely special.  Even if him telling the story, whilst in a pretty high-end villa, probably removes the sense of hearing it in a fireplace in the bush.  But then I was warm, and I had a drink, and I have made my peace with the man I am.

Hundreds of wildebeest turned up overnight while I was there.  Hyenas; elephants; lions; a leopard with her cub (which was nameless during my visit…petition to call it Tom incoming).  The herds had just started pushing across into Kenya, which meant the river crossings were on their way.  This was a good omen.

The Good

• Food
• Service
• Privacy
• Value for money

The Bad

• You’re not mistaking it for a Singita
• The never-ending battle between too hot (rooms) and too cold (swimming pool)

The Luxurious

• The land.  Two vehicles in five hours while the Park chokes on its own dust.
• Activity programme

Conclusion

It would have been rather hilarious to come back here and hate it even more than last time.  But sadly, life is not a sitcom.  Instead, I returned to find a vastly different place, and a much better one — the Bush Villa, the main camp, all of it.

On my previous Cottar’s stay, all I cared about was luxury.  I still care.  I’m not a saint.  But there is a limit to how many times you can be impressed by a commodity.  Here, a man who has walked this land for sixty years is waiting to tell you something you’ll actually remember.  Maybe he needed a translator, so you’ll remember whatever the translator said.  I think the translator is the hero of this story.  Anyway, that’s before going into the abundance of activities available, and having what feels like the Mara to yourself.

It’s funny to call something “budget luxury” at $15,000 a night in peak season.  But Singita is over $40k.  When a banana costs $10, your $4 apple suddenly looks like a bargain.  Which is a generous way of saying this isn’t the best out there — not in any single category, not by a distance.  Combined, though, it’s one of the best offerings in the Mara.  An antidote to the terribleness of the Mara, without losing any authenticity, and most importantly, fun.

So, come here for the land, the guiding, the culture, and the fact that you will not see another vehicle. If what you want is an architectural marvel that gives you a semi, that exists — it just costs double or triple this.  If what you want is the Mara without the Mara, there is nothing else quite like this at the price point.

I hated Cottar’s for eight years.  Now, I’d go back.  Maybe with a restraining order.