Kenya Safari Tours from Dubai

Five hours, non-stop. Emirates flies Dubai to Nairobi three times a day, twenty-one flights a week, and Kenya Airways also operates the route. flydubai flies daily to Mombasa on the coast. Kenya is one hour behind Dubai, so there is effectively no jet lag in either direction. It is a shorter flight than Dubai to London.

Yes, and Kenya is the only African country where that is honestly true from Dubai. Take the overnight flight, land in Nairobi at dawn, transfer to Wilson Airport and take a mid-morning light aircraft, and you can be in a Masai Mara camp for lunch on the day you land. Home on Sunday evening. Because the standard UAE weekend is Saturday and Sunday with a short Friday, it works best attached to a public holiday or with one day of leave.

Your UAE residence visa makes no difference. Kenya decides on the passport you hold, not where you live. Almost everyone needs an electronic travel authorisation (eTA), applied for online before travel, costing US$30 plus card charges and taking around three working days. Egyptian passport holders are currently exempt. There is no visa on arrival in Kenya. Apply only through the official government portal, as convincing imitation sites exist.

Conveniently, the UAE summer break lines up almost exactly with the Great Migration river crossings in the Masai Mara, which run roughly July to October. The months Dubai empties out are the best months to be in Kenya. The Eid window falls in Kenya’s short dry season, which offers excellent game viewing, superb light, far fewer visitors and lower rates. December is dry and very good but is peak international season.

From around US$750 per person per day, covering accommodation, all meals, drinks, game drives, guiding and transfers. Park and conservancy fees, light aircraft transfers and international flights are extra and are the costs most often left out of online quotes. Because the dirham is pegged to the dollar, a US dollar quote converts to the same dirham figure whenever you look at it, with no currency drift between booking and travel.

Halal catering is available at select camps and lodges rather than universally, so it is something we plan the itinerary around rather than request on arrival. Tell us at the outset and we will place you at properties that genuinely cater. Vegetarian food is available at every camp and lodge in Kenya and is handled as routine. Indian food is available at the larger lodges and is excellent in Nairobi. Stricter diets such as Jain need agreeing before booking.

Not to enter Kenya if you fly direct from Dubai. But Kenya is classified as a yellow fever risk country, so onward countries can ask for a certificate once you have been there, and if you ever route to southern Africa via Nairobi or Addis Ababa you have transited a risk country, which several countries treat as triggering the requirement. If you are visiting more than one African country, our standing advice is simply to get it: one injection, valid for life.

Because a safari is a chain of light aircraft, dirt airstrips, transfers and camps with no mobile signal, and an agent earns their fee entirely in what happens when one link breaks. We are Asilia Africa’s preferred partner in Asia, we work with hundreds of camps across the continent, and we plan around the UAE calendar rather than the northern-hemisphere one. We also apply whatever free-night offers you qualify for as a matter of course, and tell you when we think your plan is wrong.