The Kati Kati Camp is decidedly and delightfully rustic but EXACTLY as early planners had requested, and I love it! Had a nice welcome with a few rules like: do NOT go outside your tent if it’s dark; If you want to come to the main tent, wave your flashlight in that direction and someone will come get you; And you need to not take showers after dark so please schedule when you want. A charging station and refrigerator to help yourself are in the main tent. Quite an array of plugs and power strips for all types of configurations all powered by battery stored solar power as are our interior tent lights.
I loved my shower. Once you have let them know to heat the 5-gallons of water on a campfire, they pour it into the outdoor elevated bucket and respectfully announce, “Tent 5 your shower is ready.” Having been sweaty and dusty from the day’s safari, I stepped in fully clothed, soaped up hair, clothes and body and rung it all out in the pull chain shower on a wooden platform in a zipped-up tent compartment. Awesome.
I rested and wrote while lying in our comfy king-sized bed with laundry drying outside, a full belly and a snoozy companion by my side. It doesn’t get much better than this.
Overnight at the Kati Kati camp we were visited by hyena – obviously heard by all, a lion (according to the guides that’s what left a deposit near another tent), water buffalo and something scurrying across the top of a couple tents.
Dinner and breakfast were served in a centrally located communal tent open to the sunset and sunrise views with plenty of room to relax in folding directors’ chairs while sipping cocktails or beer at the help-yourself refrigerator powered by solar panels. Buffet meals offered a vast selection of meats, vegetables, samosas, rice, salads and fruits to suit any palate. Breakfast offered an additional option of made-to-order eggs or omelets. Each morning, after breakfast, we picked up our empty lunch boxes and selected from a wide variety of choices what would go with us for the day. One day might be fried chicken, salads, bananas, juice boxes, and cookies. Another was chicken salad sandwiches, peanuts, samosas, cut fruit, yogurt, etc.
Some might not like this tented glamping, but I would have appreciated another couple of days there to completely explore the camp. Maybe an afternoon of snoozing and writing. The beds were hard, not so private but definitely glamping with battery-operated lights and indoor plumbing and wood floors.
The late-night glow of dinnertime candles or lanterns on porches with the flapping of laundry drying on a line, the distant flashes of lightening and the welp-welp of hyenas struck a romantic tone for me. It was just delightful.
