Dark Skies and Wild Nights: This New Safari Camp in Kenya Lets You Sleep Under the Stars

“This bright object on the western horizon is Venus,” said Benson Oldapash Kishoyian, motioning to a shimmering point of light hanging above the mountains that surrounded our safari camp in northern Kenya. The full moon rising over the ridge opposite cast a silvery glow over the valley and the distant Mount Ololokwe, the region’s most sacred mountain.

I already knew I was looking at Venus—after all, I’ve spent the past decade learning astronomy and chasing dark skies around the world. But the reason I traveled 15 hours from my home in London to Basecamp Saruni—in the heart of Samburu County, an 8,000-square-mile expanse of arid bushland along the Great Rift Valley—was to understand what the night sky means to the Samburu and Maasai people. These pastoral cultures indigenous to this part of Kenya have a profound connection to Venus, or Lakera Leseran, which means “Morning Star” in the local language. According to oral history, ancestors of the Samburu and Maasai—who were originally one people but split into two groups about three centuries ago—originated from Venus. As we looked at the sky, Benson told me that their god, Nkai, built a ladder and invited the people down to a new planet created for them: Nkop, or Earth.

Benson, my star guide, is the manager of the new Basecamp Samburu located in the Kalama Community Wildlife Conservancy. Originally from the Maasai Mara, and of the Maasai culture, he began his career as assistant manager at Saruni Samburu, a sister property, a few miles away. When Saruni opened a second camp in Kalama, Benson was tapped to lead it. Today, he manages a staff that guides visitors to see the Samburu “special five”: rare species including the endangered Grevy’s zebra, the long-necked gerenuk, the reticulated giraffe, the East African oryx, and the Somali ostrich.

In addition to the camp’s game drives and walking safaris, Benson also leads visitors on “star safaris”—stargazing experiences that include both Western astronomy and Indigenous star stories, as well as knowledge of the nocturnal ecosystem, including hunting for the shy species of scorpions that, he demonstrates one evening, glow under an ultraviolet flashlight. Hearing Benson tell me his stories of the constellations gave me an appreciation for how deeply our cultures impact what we see in the sky. He pointed out Orion, which Western astronomy describes as a hunter holding a bow and arrow and wearing a belt of three stars. Instead, he said the Samburu focus only on the three stars in a line, interpreting them as warriors taking a lamb to slaughter. He also told me the Milky Way is called Ntapar in Samburu, and it represents all God’s cattle in the sky—cattle being a cultural representation of wealth.

Courtesy of Elewana

Starry night’s sleep in Kalama

Kalama Community Wildlife Conservancy is a 62-square-mile community-run wildlife conservancy patrolled by Morani–Samburu warriors who live in the bush; it borders Samburu National Reserve. It operates as a nonprofit and is governed by a council of Samburu elders from each group that lives here. The conservancy works to protect both its dark skies and its threatened species through community-led conservation initiatives that create livelihoods for locals. Those efforts include a rotational grazing program that prevents overgrazing and promotes soil health, and tourism, with the help of Basecamp Samburu, which opened in January 2025 and is operated by Saruni Basecamp, a collection of 13 camps and lodges in Kenya owned by a Norwegian conservationist.

Saruni Basecamp pays community fees for land leases, conservation, and overnight stays to support the conservancy. According to Kalama Conservancy’s annual report, in 2023, income from Saruni Basecamp amounted to $223,600. The conservancy uses 40 percent of this visitor income to support its operation and the other 60 percent funds community needs, including ranger training, road maintenance, health clinics, education bursaries, and shared vehicles. About 90 percent of the staff at Basecamp Samburu are from the community, providing upskilling and opportunities for advancement.

I reached Samburu by bush flight from Nairobi—in about 90 minutes, the tiny prop plane passed snow-topped Mount Kenya, the country’s highest peak, and dipped in and out of a few other conservancies, picking up and dropping off passengers, before arriving at the tiny Kalama airstrip. Safari guide Sumoro Lesharkole was waiting for us in an open-sided Jeep, wearing a red Samburu garment called a shukka. The canvas-walled tented camp was built with local materials, with only five tents plus a common area; it felt intimate, quiet, and deeply immersed in nature. The big draw for me was Basecamp Samburu’s star bed, and I was lucky to be the first to sleep in it.

On the first evening, after a dinner of warm bread, fish, and berry ice cream, Benson donned his headlamp and led me up a short, steep outdoor path to the open-air star bed on a wooden platform, which hovered one story above the ground. Soft amber lamps were lit beside the plush double bed surrounded by mosquito netting with an open view of the sky. There was also a shower and a hot tub, and down a set of steps, a full bathroom with another shower, toilet, and sink—all enclosed in a high wooden fence designed to keep out curious nighttime visitors.

Benson smiled and nodded toward the moon. “You will have no trouble seeing tonight,” he said, then pointed out the askari, or nighttime security guard, standing watch outside the platform, who would make sure I was safe from predators.

It was easy for me to fall into a deep sleep soundtracked by crickets and faraway hyena whoops. I’d never slept in a real bed under an open sky before. When I woke up in the middle of the night, the sky map above me had moved—the moon was farther west, and the constellation Orion (the hunter) had risen. I was amazed to find that, here at the equator, Orion lay on his side rather than standing upright as he does where I live in London. Lying there, I thought about the Maasai and Samburu people who had migrated through these lands centuries ago using the stars to find their way. How amazing it was that I was looking at those same stars tonight.

Photo by Brian Siambi

The rise of dark sky tourism and the “star safari”

Nighttime ecotourism is a growing trend. A 2023 study in the journal Science revealed that light pollution is increasing by 10 percent each year. As a result, 72 percent of travelers, according to Booking.com, are seeking trips to places where the night sky still shines. People living in cities across the world can no longer see the Milky Way and have lost an ancient human connection with the night sky.

While dark-sky viewing has always been an essential part of the African safari experience, a growing number of safari camps and lodges in Africa are creating experiences centered on inky night skies. Among the first people to offer travelers “star safaris” were Susan Murabana and Daniel Chu Owen, founders of the Kenya-based social enterprise Travelling Telescope, which visitors can book as an add-on to their usual safari tour.

“We are partly focused on star safaris for travelers, and we put the income from those bookings into giving back educational opportunities at schools in Kenya,” Susan told me, with Daniel adding that something changes in people when they look through a telescope for the first time. “They feel a connection to the cosmos and are more likely to want to preserve it,” he said.

Courtesy of Lion Sands River Lodge

In addition to Basecamp Samburu’s new star bed, Saruni Basecamp’s Leopard Hill property in the Maasai Mara has tents with retractable roofs for enclosed stargazing within a more traditional tented camp. Loisaba Star Beds, also in Samburu, offers traditional rooms with large verandas and beds on wheels that can be rolled between covered shelter and open sky. Asilia Africa has fly camping in mesh-enclosed tents at its Olakira Migration Camp in the Serengeti in neighboring Tanzania. In Malawi, Mkulumadzi Lodge has an open-air bed on a raised platform near the Shire River, while Lion Sands River Lodge in South Africa’s Kruger National Park has a stargazing tree platform, and Desert & Delta will set luxurious mattresses out on the Makgadikgadi Salt Pan in Botswana for uninterrupted views of the stars.

Coinciding with the rise in star safaris, in 2024 the first dark sky conservation efforts started in East Africa with the formation of a Kenya chapter of DarkSky International, the nonprofit organization that certifies dark sky parks, reserves, and sanctuaries worldwide. Cofounders of the Kenya chapter, Nyaguthii Carol and Samyukta Manikumar, told me they aim to work with conservancies and national parks to promote responsible lighting practices that will allow Kenya’s skies to remain starry and its abundance of nocturnal and crepuscular species, like leopards and hyena, to flourish as well as its charismatic diurnal animals. They explained that even animals awake during the day experience the benefits of dark nights, whether through rest or by proxy. The knock-on effects from light pollution can cause problems across the food web through the ecosystem services provided by nocturnal creatures, including pollinators and smaller nocturnal mammals.

Here in northern Kenya, it became clear that protecting natural darkness goes far beyond admiring a pretty sky—it’s essential for conserving the rhythms of nocturnal life. After my time in Samburu County, I also understood that dark skies are a living archive of wisdom to the Indigenous cultures here. Before leaving me to the Basecamp Samburu star bed for the night, Benson pointed to a cross-shaped group of stars above the mountains. It was the Southern Cross, a constellation that points due south, only visible in the Southern Hemisphere.

“The Maasai and Samburu are pastoral nomads,” he said. “Our families move from one place to the other—always during the night, guided by the stars of the Southern Cross. We have always looked to the sky to find our way.”