Laragai House, Borana Conservancy

Laragai is a house, and that is why we use it. Two English lords built it in the 1980s as their own retreat on what is now the Borana Conservancy, and it still feels like someone's home: fireplaces, old photographs, a kitchen that will cook whatever anyone in your family wants, whenever they want it. You take the whole house. Nobody else is staying.

It sits at about 1,800 metres on the Laikipia Plateau, looking across to Mount Kenya and north over the Northern Frontier District. There is a clay tennis court, a heated pool and a games room. The pool deck looks over a waterhole where elephant come down to drink, and in the evenings that is where everyone ends up. Food comes from the Kabati regenerative farm next door.

Borana runs one of Kenya's most important rhino programmes. Your guides take the adults and teenagers to find rhino on foot, and those who ride go out on horseback. On the last evening we set a long table on the edge of the escarpment, with Mount Kenya above you and the plains dropping away below.

Ask for the three master bedrooms with fireplaces for the older generation; the twin rooms suit children and teenagers. It is the right house for families of four to six, up to three generations, who want one roof and their own pace.

You fly from Wilson Airport by private charter to Borana's own airstrip, about forty-five minutes north, and the staff meet you on the strip.

Good to know

• Laragai is let to one party only and priced on a minimum of six guests, so a family of four has the whole house.
• Laragai is malaria-free. The Maasai Mara, which follows on both our journeys, is not.
• Horse riding is for ages eight and over, beginners included.
• A helicopter morning over the plateau to the peaks of Mount Kenya can be added.

Country: Kenya