3-Day Tsavo East Safari from Mombasa

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Ivo H.

September 05, 2025

The many positive reviews are misleading, check out the newest ones! I should probably have done so before booking with this company. It seems that we were really lucky compared to other people in August 2025. At least our 2 days' safari to Tsavo East did take place, the wonderful Satao Tented Camp hotel had been paid for, we had a competent and friendly driver who arrived on time, and we saw many animals including lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras and many more. Nevertheless, I asked the company for a partial refund of our payment because the description of the two days' safari on their website is not quite what we have received. As we had to find out, visitors have to leave the park within 24 hours from entering. If not, an additional full day's park fee is incurred. This means that after breakfast on the second day (our driver was not keen to go on a game drive before dawn, and he advised against it), there was just a short game drive before we rushed back to the gate. So no lunch on the second day, no final game drive before heading back, and no visit to Mudanda Rock (too far from the gate and hotel). All of this and more (like on-board Wifi, 4 binoculars, sand bags and booklets on the Jeep - an old Toyota in our case) is described in detail and guaranteed on their website. When I confronted the company with these significant differences to the description, I got all sorts of excuses and lies that made absolutely no sense. It became clear to me that no way they would ever make the requested partial refund. Make sure you read that final confirmation mail! But you will already have fully paid for the trip by then, and it will probably be too late. Overall, when reading other travelers' experience with this company, it seems that we were quite lucky by comparison, as we had a shorter and less comprehensive than expected, but overall great safari. PS: One strange thing happened during the booking conversation ahead of the trip: They suddenly asked me via WhatsApp to make the final payment to a different bank account. Maybe luckily, I had already made the second payment to the same bank account that had been mentioned in the email. But this WhatsApp message did sound strange to me, almost like an attempted fraud.

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Brent T.

July 06, 2025

This company is now a scam and has fraudulent business practices. I previously worked with this company years ago in 2018 and had a really fantastic Safari experience, which is why I used them again. They are apparently under new and fraudulent management doing illegal business. Booked a 5 day safari to the Masai Mara and Lake Nakuru working directly w Ezra Kuria and Humphrey N. Ndara, who now manages the company. We were left completely stranded in the Masai Mara with no park tickets or housing accommodations, requiring me to both pay out of pocket and to end my trip early and forfeit the reminder of my tour given zero availability of housing accommodations. They also directly confirmed to me that they are also now operating under numerous company names (East Africa Safaris, amongst others) to try to deceive Kenyan business and international customers given their online reputation. We reserved the Marai Engai and The Cliff respectively, along with full board, food, water as well as park entrances and a driver. the Masai Mara and beyond. On the way our guide had issues getting park tickets due to “frozen bank accounts” and also our accommodations confirmed we had no reservations and they had not been paid but he company, requiring us to double pay for accommodations as we were told by management of the Marai Engai we could not enter our room until the room was paid, very embarrassing. Additionally we called The Cliff hotel, in Lake Nakuru, our next stop and they confirmed there were no reservations for us and that they no longer accept bookings from Natural World Kenya do to fraud and scamming, as well as non payment many times. We attempted to pay out of pocket to not ruin our full vacation but they were fully booked as were all other hotels causing us to forfeit the remainder of our trip. We have tried numerous times to contact Natural World Kenya and have been fully ghosted with empty promises and no refunds. This is a full scam operations and also recently noted by many other reviews here and on Trip Advisor (do your research and be warned). We have now double paid (extremely expensive) out of pocket for the entire trip and have filed police action with the National Police Service, DCI, KATO and other regulatory agencies in Kenya and recommend others to do the same. Fraud is bad for Kenyans, bad for business and extremely unfair to travelers trying to do vacations with hard earned, honest people. Our trip has been fully ruined with so far no recourse and a company who seems not to care about people. Again - this is new management and we highly recommend you do your research as they have a bunch of fake reviews here on Google. We do not blame our driver as he was caught way off guard and tried his best to help us resolve the issue and was extremely embarrassed. We were lucky he was very experienced and calm and knew a lot of people at the hotels and the park service to help us try to find solutions before having to bring us back to Nairobi early. We have also heard many of the drivers are now not being paid by this company. Avoid at all costs.

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Roshan J.

July 06, 2025

Do not book a safari with Natural World, they are scammers and will ruin your trip! We used them in 2017 and early 2024 but at some point since then they have become scammers. On our trip in 2025 we learned that they stole our $12k+ USD deposit and did not confirm the lodges they said they did 1 year earlier. We booked a 5-night July 2025 safari for 9 people and paid a 40% deposit to Natural World in July 2024. They said we were fully confirmed at that time and again a month before our trip. However 3 days before the start of our safari they told us they had not “allocated” the deposit to our account, and then became evasive with messages, emails, and calls, and then started ignoring me completely. I had to call their owner Humphrey from other people’s phones to make him pick up, and he was manipulative and kept changing his story about why he couldn’t access our money. Similarly their booking agents were slow to respond to us and lied about our lodge bookings being confirmed. In the end we had to pay the same deposit again once we began our safari in Tanzania and are hoping we can get refunded by our credit cards. We’ve also learned that they were insured by KATO in 2024 but have since been suspended however are still using the KATO logo on their website. Do not trust this company!