By Santiago Legarre
I met the managing director of Ashnil Hotels many years ago, at the Argentine Embassy in Kenya. It was Independence Day back home in my country, and more than 40 Argentines who live in Nairobi had gathered to celebrate with friends. A conversation with the manager at that cocktail party was my first opportunity to get acquainted with the Ashnil group.
When he learned that, aside from being a lecturer, I was a travel writer, he invited me to visit their properties and write an article about my experience, which I did.
Ten years later, in July 2025, I returned to one of those properties. I flew with Safarilink to the Maasai Mara —the best way, by far, to reach Kenya’s top safari destination: no traffic jams, no stress. Just enjoy the marvellous hospitality of Safarilink.
I found Ashnil Mara had really changed — greatly improved. The reception area, the bar, and the dining room all look lighter now; more elegant. It’s as if the newfound lightness of the place shines a clearer view of the Mara River, on whose banks the property sits. One thing, of course, had not changed, and that was the camp’s prime location in the Masai Mara National Reserve, right next to the Mara Triangle.
The game drive in the immediate vicinity of camp is extraordinary. On my first visit, many years ago, I had spotted a lioness on top of a very tall tree, three minutes from the lodge. She was stalking impala from above — a most unusual behaviour— after which she swiftly descended and chased them.
On my most recent visit, I managed to see the “big four” cats within 24 hours of each other, not far from the lodge: lion, leopard, cheetah, and serval. The encounter with the latter two deserves separate paragraphs.
The lone cheetah that we found enjoyed the type of luck that reminds you of the toughness of the law of the bush. A newborn Thomson gazelle–perhaps a couple of days old–woke up from her nap and, on her own, got on walking straight into the jaws of the cheetah. Our eyes couldn’t believe what was about to happen. Some onlookers screamed. Did the baby not know where she was heading? Where was the mother? Questions for the afterlife of the gazelle.
The serval cat is usually a timid animal. But this time round, not far from Ashnil, we bumped into an unusual extrovert. This most elegant feline welcomed us into his company for half an hour as he stalked a mouse and successfully hunted it, using the extraordinary listening capabilities of his extended ears.
My visit to the revamped Ashnil Mara coincided with the great migration. Because the lodge sits on the Mara River, it will come as no surprise that several crossing points are around the corner from camp. The wildebeest were yet to cross when I went to the national reserve in July of 2025, but thousands of zebras peacefully stormed into the plains that surround Ashnil Mara while I was there. It was quite the spectacle, a striped one instead of the more famous grey one!
All in all, the Ashnil Mara experience exceeded my expectations. Nature has not changed much by the Mara River, of course. But the renewed hospitality made the difference!
