Angama Mara
Kenya
Angama Mara
The Mara Triangle Conservancy Maasai Mara Game Reserve, Lolgorien, Kenya
HOTEL INFORMATION
Group
Angama
Shareholders
Privately owned
Date of Creation
2015
Hotel General Manager
Ken Mambo
Originally from Mombasa on the beautiful Kenyan coast, Ken has worked both in the hospitality industry throughout East and Southern Africa. He now calls Angama Mara home, running a seamless and tight ship whilst looking after our precious guests.
Hotel Positioning
5-Star Luxury Safari Lodge
Development Strategy
Angama Mara is the culmination of Steve & Nicky Fitzgerald’s 40-year careers developing and operating safari lodges all over the world (most notably at the helm of &Beyond from 1994-2009). Angama took a small step in development with the addition of a luxury mobile tented Camp – Angama Safari Camp – in 2020 located within the Mara Triangle. The opening of Angama Amboseli in November 2023, saw the next phase of Angama with a second permanent lodge in the shadow of Mount Kilimajaro. Watch this space for future development within East Africa.
Angama Mara
History and Story
Steve Fitzgerald, Angama’s co-Founder with his wife Nicky, waited 15 years to sign the lease on the land where Angama Mara is located. In his humble opinion, after having built and operated over 60 hotels and lodges across Africa, this site was one of the most beautiful he had ever come across – sitting 1,000 feet above the Mara Triangle, on the edge of the Great Rift Valley. Through long-established friendships with Angama’s Maasai land owners, the Fitzgeralds were pulled out of retirement after an illustrious career when the phone rang out of the blue in 2014 saying that the lease was available.
Renovation Date
Areas throughout the lodge including the Tented Suites have continuously been refreshed. However, more significant investment took place in 2024
Architects: Silvio Rech and Lesley Carsten; Interior designer Annemarie Meintjes.
Date of added extensions
2019 – The Map Room – The design of the Map room harks back to an age of exploration and information
The room’s centerpiece is a monumental steel map sculpture by Simon Bannister. This feature is primarly for orientation and wildlife tracking, creating a visual log of what has been seen that day.
Main Strengths, Special Touch
Angama Mara’s remarkable setting overlooks what many safari travellers deem one of the finest game reserves on the continent, Kenya’s Maasai Mara, where guests are spoilt for choice exploring the park’s abundant wildlife. The glass-fronted Tented Suites offer incredible uninterrupted views of the Mara Triangle not only from the bath, but the bed, the sitting area, the shower and even the w/c. Angama Mara is a relaxed, gentle place — filled with fun and a sense of the unexpected. With no set schedules, days are crafted around what guests would like to do, when they would like to do it.
Angama was founded on the underlying belief in guest delight, with a more contemporary take on both the safari experience and lodge design. More than a place, Angama is the simple belief in looking after one another — our guests, our team and our neighbours, both human and wild. To create opportunities and make a tangible difference, Angama leases from landowners, hires locally and supports education, healthcare & conservation projects through its Foundation.
Location
Set on the edge of the Oloololo Escarpment, with views that stretch as far as the eye can see across the Maasai Mara set 1,000ft below. The 700-hectare site directly borders the Mara Triangle, with 1.2km of Rift Valley frontage, its own forests and resident general game.
The unexpected elevation of the lodge’s location often has an emotional effect on guests — an almost dreamlike quality of being somewhere ‘between heaven and earth. Although still connected to the unmatched game-viewing of the Mara Triangle below by a private road directly into the Reserve — a mere 10-minute drive to the entrance
Key sites/activities in the area
Guests enjoy days spent exploring the abundant wildlife — with the Reserve offering outstanding game viewing year round — hot-air ballooning, walking safaris, garden-to-table lunches in the Shamba, hosted photographic safaris, a romantic picnic at the Out of Africa hill. Always offering a ‘sense of place’, guests’ time can be spent learning about fascinating Maasai culture, including a visit to the Maasai Mamas who create bespoke beading or discover the fauna and flora of the Great Rift Valley on foot with one of our Maasai Naturalist guides.
Fun Facts
• Angama is a Swahili word for ‘suspended in mid-air’. Nicky Fitzgerald searched the Swahili/English dictionary when trying to find the right name for the new lodge. Luckily she found it in ‘A’, although story has it, that she went all the way to ‘z’ and back again.
• Angama honoured Scarface, the most notorious and sought-after male lion in the Maasai Mara, with a handsome steel-cut portrait that greets our guests at the entrance to our sunset boma. Designed by talented steel sculptor Simon Max Bannister.
• Subtle nods to Out of Africa can be found throughout Angama Mara. If you’ve read the novel or watched the film, you can find these scattered throughout the lodge, including a commemorative plaque marking the spot of Finch Hatton’s burial in the film, filmed right on the Angama Mara property.
Children Corner
Children of all ages are welcome at Angama year round, with children’s activities on offer every day of guests’ trip.
The first two children in any booking or combination of bookings, under the age of twelve stay as our guests during the standard season.
Complimentary childminding by experienced women on our team is included between 18h00 and 22h00 daily, so parents can enjoy a quiet dinner while on safari.
HOTEL FEATURES
Accommodation
• Number of suites: 30 Tented Suites (located across two camps of 15 Tented Suites Each – North & South Camp)
• Number of rooms, (keys) in all: 30
• Tented Suites span over 100sqm, including the deck, and feature 11m wide floor-to-ceiling glass frontage offering views from everywhere
• Writing desk & 10 Int’l plug points / USB
• Personalised drinks cabinet
• Double vanity & large soaking bathtub
• Two ceiling fans
Restaurants & Bars
Our food is not fancy. Our food is Good— this is the philosophy of the Angama Mara kitchen, with a focus on simple, delicious, fresh and filling dishes, inspired by the local Kenyan cuisine, Swahili flavours, as well as celebrating the long kistory of Indian cuisine in Kenya. Our menus changes daily and are always served à la carte.
• Both North and South Camps each have Guest Areas that offer flexible indoor-outdoor dining. An indoor fire is lit nightly as is the fire pit at the ‘baraza’ (a place of gathering) out on the deck, under the stars, overlooking the Mara. The perfect place to wind down the day by the fire, over drinks and ‘bitings’. The Guest Areas each boast a handsome library where private dinners can be enjoyed.
• Planning menus, sourcing ingredients, preparing delicious dishes and serving them to our guests in heart-stopping locations is what the Angama kitchen team loves to do best. No matter the time of day, there’s always something delicious at hand. There’s never a lack of food and no shortage of memorable places to eat either, from your Tented Suite to a signature Angama picnic in the Mara Triangle; not to mention The Map Room, Boule Pitch, Out of Africa Hill, The Shamba (Kitchen Garden), Libraries and Pool.
• We offer an all inclusive rate including all meals and an extensive wine list
• Kosher and Halaal meal options available on request (six weeks notice should be given)
Wellness
• Guests can enjoy full-body massages and nail treatments in the privacy of their Tented Suites. Massage beds are set up in-tent, or outdoors on your private deck, depending on your preference.
•The Fitness Room, with floor-to-ceiling glass stacking-doors offers views of the Mara below whilst working out.
•Keep up with some of the best long-distance runners in the world at almost 2,000m above sea level by ‘Running with a Kenyan’. An experience not soon forgotten by our guests who run long-distance along the Great Rift Valley with a Maasai ‘Angama Running Club’ team member as their guide.
•The 12m rim-flow Swimming Pool designed for families, sun lovers, and serious swimmers, also offers views of the Mara below and beyond.
Corporate & Celebration events
• The Angama Mara team love to celebrate, and they do in true Maasai style: with beautiful beadwork, dancing warriors, extraordinary backdrops and of course, the warmest Kenyan hospitality.
• No matter the occasion, there are different settings to suit the celebration: the Pavilion, the Map Room, the setting of the famous Out of Africa picnicl scene, or perhaps an evening in the Boma.
• Each of the two camps at Angama Mara accommodates up to 30 guests in 15 identical Tented Suites. With accommodation for up to 60 guests across both camps, Angama Mara is perfect for groups, private jets, weddings, milestone celebrations and multi-generational families.
Extra notable features
• Movie nights in the Map room – Guests can immerse themselves in the history of a bygone era in the Map Room while watching the iconic Out of Africa movie in the very place it was filmed.
• Safari Shop – Showcasing locally made and curated items the Angama Safari Shop offers a little piece of Africa to take home as a gift or as a memory: from jewellery and beaded belts to, safari wear, felt hats, luggage and Anna Trzebinski’s famous pashminas.
• The Photographic Studio – a workplace of creativity offering photographers on hand to provide tutorials, editing sessions, photoshoots and equipment hire.
• The Beading Studio – where Maasai Mamas from Angama Mara’s neighbouring communities daily create bespoke keepsakes for our guests, as well as offer them a chance at trying their own hand at the ancient art of beading.
• The Sundowner Boma – where Angama Mara guests watch the sunset from a spectacular vantage point above the Rift Valley. Here, over cocktails and bitings, guests can enjoy a Maasai warrior performance of traditional singing, dancing and jumping — or they can join in.
• The Shamba – Angama Mara’s one-acre vegetable garden where guests can enjoy a garden-to-fork lunch under the towering, shady Moth trees overlooking the impressive organic garden.
• The Out of Africa hill – guests can enjoy an intimate picnic on the very site where some of the most romantic scenes of Sydney Pollack’s all-time classic were filmed.
• Finch Hatton’s ‘Burial’ Site – the same site featured at the film’s end. Guests can pay their respects at the beautiful moth tree, with a special commemorative plaque marking the spot.
Hotel and restaurant awards
2024:
• Travel & Leisure World’s Best Awards – 10 Favorite safari lodges in Africa
• Travel + Leisure 500 Best Hotels in the World
• Robb Report 50 Greatest Luxury Hotels
• Tripadvisor Travelers’ Choice Award (Top 1%)
2019-2023:
• Travel & Leisure World’s Best Awards – 10 Favorite safari lodges in Africa (9 years since 2015)
• Condé Naste Traveler Reader’s Choice Awards – (2020, 2021, 2022)
• Condé Naste Gold List (2021)
•Travel + Leisure 500 Best Hotels in the World (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023)
• Tripadvisor Travelers’ Choice Award (2022, 2023)
• Robb Report 50 Greatest Luxury Hotels (2023)
• 2020 Fodor’s Finest Hotels Awards
• 2022 Andrew Harper Editors’ Choice Award
Number of employees
200 employees