¹A new generation of Masai safari guides is growing up in Kenya, and their expertise can lead to memorable encounters with cheetah and other big game.

²At the airstrip, in the heart of the Masai Mara game reserve in Kenya, a fleet of safari vehicles is lined up, waiting to take incoming visitors to their camps and lodges. The driver-guides are dressed for the part in faded khaki—all except one, who sits at the wheel of his Toyota Land Cruiser wearing the blood-red robes of a Masai elder. Jackson ole Looseyia is an Il Dorobo Masai, a clan of hunter-gatherers who live in the hills just outside the reserve.

³On the way to Rekero, the tented camp where Jackson is both a guide and a shareholder, we pause to watch a herd of buffalo. “Did you know a buffalo can produce 20 litres of saliva a day?” he says. This, I discover, is Jackson‘s style. He dispenses his knowledge in handy sound-bytes.

⁴Rekero is owned by Ron Beaton, a third-generation Kenyan who also runs a lodge on the reserve‘s northern fringes. It is an idyllic campsite—the loveliest I have ever seen—in a secluded part of the reserve where other vehicles seldom venture. Blue flycatchers and golden orioles flit among the leaves. By day, herds of zebra come down to drink at the Talek River. There are no fences; and at night, elephant, buffalo, hippo, and lion regularly wander between the tents.

⁵Next morning Jackson has planned a full-day game drive to the Mara Triangle, a remote and beautiful area bordering the Serengeti National Park.