I am writing this review as a wildlife photographer who has visited Kenya & Tanzania 5 times in the last 3 years and stayed in 8 luxury camps spread over Masai Mara,Samburu and Amboseli.The Cottars family have been in Kenya for nearly 100 years and Kalvin Cottars is the 5th generation.The luxury camp is well spread out with nice spacious tents in interesting surroundings. The Manager of the Camp,Douglas Nagi is an excellent Manager, mixes well with all the guests and is a great wildlife story teller.He connects all the guests through communal dining which is an excellent Cottars special.He creates a very home like atmosphere and makes each guest special.I have nothing but high praise for Douglas....he is as good as it gets in the Mara! The Butler/Steward system worked very well and Ken was outstanding. Now for other plus points....Cottars also provides a spotter with each game drive which not many camps in the Mara do.A spotter, in addition to the driver-guide makes for an excellent combination for spotting of game.In addition,Cottars is licensed to make all bookings,like Nairobi hotels, internal flights,bookings in other camps, etc.Further,Cottors also has a superb Bush Villa,near the camp which can accommodate 10-12 persons for an exclusive safari experience.Many Camps in the Mara do not offer this kind of facitity. Cottars operates its game drives in an exclusive part of the Masai Mara Reserve,near the Tanzanian border and therefore offers exclusivity in the...I am writing this review as a wildlife photographer who has visited Kenya & Tanzania 5 times in the last 3 years and stayed in 8 luxury camps spread over Masai Mara,Samburu and Amboseli.The Cottars family have been in Kenya for nearly 100 years and Kalvin Cottars is the 5th generation.The luxury camp is well spread out with nice spacious tents in interesting surroundings.

The Manager of the Camp,Douglas Nagi is an excellent Manager, mixes well with all the guests and is a great wildlife story teller.He connects all the guests through communal dining which is an excellent Cottars special.He creates a very home like atmosphere and makes each guest special.I have nothing but high praise for Douglas....he is as good as it gets in the Mara!

The Butler/Steward system worked very well and Ken was outstanding.

Now for other plus points....Cottars also provides a spotter with each game drive which not many camps in the Mara do.A spotter, in addition to the driver-guide makes for an excellent combination for spotting of game.In addition,Cottars is licensed to make all bookings,like Nairobi hotels, internal flights,bookings in other camps, etc.Further,Cottors also has a superb Bush Villa,near the camp which can accommodate 10-12 persons for an exclusive safari experience.Many Camps in the Mara do not offer this kind of facitity. Cottars operates its game drives in an exclusive part of the Masai Mara Reserve,near the Tanzanian border and therefore offers exclusivity in the Mara with very few vehicles from other Camps.It is not crowded as some parts of the Mara can get during the busy season and offers off the road drives in the Mara.I was privileged to be given all exclusive complimentary game drives.

Now for some minor irritations.....The vehicle provided to us was poor quality,though I admit that on complaint Douglas replaced it with a better one.The rooms do not provide slippers and hair dryer unless requested.Why?The 5 hour game drive from Cottars to Mahali Mzuri-my next destination had an unwelcome person on board without my permission who happened to be a guard at Cottars.He occupied the front seat next to the driver-guide and prevented me from using the front seat for photography as I did on some of my earlier game drives for low level photography.He was constantly chatting with the guide during the game drive.Why did this happen?Lastly, my booking was handled by Titus, who I learnt was a 22 year old employee at Nairobi.He eventually handled all my queries well but was casual in that errors were made in the booking procedure which should not have happened.All this caused me a lot of irritation with repeated back and forth of unnecessary emails.He is a good young very helpful talented person but needs more training.

Despite these irritations,Cottars has so much going for it as a superb Camp experience that I have no hesitation in giving it a 5 star!

I hope that Cottars take these suggestions as feedback for improvement and hope to come back one day...More