Mkombe’s House Lamai

Mkombe’s House is entirely self-contained with four bedrooms, a dining room and lounge, plunge pool and larger swimming pool and plenty of outside chill-out areas. Interior is reminiscent of the classic safari style, with hues of Cyprus canvas, ornate furniture and an East-African aesthetic that reveals itself within the houses many furnishings. There is a dedicated team of staff and an in-house chef. Mkombe’s House has two open fronted double/twin rooms, each with a private veranda and en-suite bathroom. A further two bedrooms are smaller, secure, enclosed, and contain their own en-suite bathroom, ideal for younger children.

Amenities Include:

• Balcony / deck
• Bath
• Electrical outlets
• En-suite facilities
• Laundry service
• Mosquito nets
• Plunge pool
• Swimming pool
• Al-fresco shower
• WIFI
• Veranda

Meals are planned with the in-house chef daily, allowing for lots of flexibility and plenty of choice from a menu consisting of exclusively fresh produce, home-baking and delicious flavours. If you have any specific dietary requirements, be sure to inform your in-house chef so that they can accommodate your culinary preferences. You’re free to enjoy the finest quality dining with a view to match, so why not tuck into your bespoke meal while savouring the pristine Serengeti vistas from the vantage of your private veranda?

All standard drinks and beverages are covered in the initial fee. With fully inclusive rates, you’re free to indulge in a mouth-watering range of alcoholic and none-alcoholic beverages at your own discretion. Premium and imported products are charged at additional fees.

Embark for the vibrant and fertile plains of the Serengeti in open 4×4 safari vehicles for a game viewing experience of a lifetime. Feel free to bring the little ones along too, as all safari activities are tailored to suit the needs of guests of all ages (respectively). Seasoned Nomad guides, familiar with the land and wildlife will lead you through the expansive landscape in search of wild game, with regular sightings of lion, rhino, buffalo, cheetah, and leopard, among other staple safari favourites throughout the 10,000-hectare wildlife concession.

For all those in search of an authentic, grass-roots great plains safari excursion, a guided bush walk will allow you to soak up the intricacies of nature while traversing the land at a more intimate and leisurely pace than is applicable with other modes of safari game viewing. Watch birds, explore a dry riverbed, walk in the footsteps of a lion herd or wildebeest, sit in stillness of the shade of an ancient tree, unravel the stories behind animal tracks or simply stretch your legs.

Other family days out look rather dull in comparison with a drive just down the track to the Mara River. Through its waters slide huge numbers of Nile crocodiles. Come the end of the dry season, it’s feeding time, when the Migration thunders across their waters. This phenomenal ecological event is just a snippet of what the Great Migration has in-store, but the sight of thousands of water buffalo crossing the Mara River is truly a sight to behold.

The Serengeti-Mara ecosystem is one of Africa’s Endemic Bird Areas, featuring over 500 exotic species waiting for you to discover. Bird watching in the Serengeti is phenomenal year-round, but at its absolute best during November through April. Not only is this when European and North African migratory birds are present, but it is also nesting time for resident species. Keep your eyes peeled for the likes of the black-headed gonolek, Fischer’s lovebird and Verreaux’s eagle.

Traverse the skies of the Serengeti for an exclusive birds-eye view of the Great Migration below. Watch as vast mammal herds pass beneath you as the morning winds direct your course from the vantage of a basket high in the sky. This truly unique game viewing experience draws to a close with a delicious breakfast spread in the heart of the Serengeti plains. Please note, hot-air balloon excursions are charged at additional fees and are accessible via external camp location.

Take in the atmosphere of the pristine Serengeti night sky while gathered around a cosy campfire in the company of friends and family. Untarnished by light pollution, the remote areas of the Serengeti bush provide the perfect arena for a picturesque star-gazing experience. Marvel at the infinite sky, which features the Big Dipper in the northern hemisphere and the Southern Cross and Pointers in the southern hemisphere.

Mkombe’s House Lamai is a Nomad Tanzania camp. Nomad utilises planes, cars, camps and their teams in order to offer aid to the more remote and isolated regions of Tanzania and provide educational support. Nomad donates safari experiences to auctions in order to raise money for these projects. Nomad’s educational support includes investing in nursery centres and meal programmes to provide children with an education as early as possible, and the nutrition to get them through the school day.

Nomad also funds scholarships for gifted children and provides internships within their camps. This gives youth a chance to learn about the tourism industry and how they could forge a career here. Additionally, Nomad works with partners who support education programmes that centre around sustainability and conservation.

The Nomad Tanzania Trust also provides support to medical facilities so that they can reach remote people in need. Nomad has partnered with The Plaster House in Arusha, a facility that offers corrective, orthopaedic, plastic surgery, neurosurgery and post-op care to children with disfigurements. This means that children can get the care they need and prevents them from being hidden by their families. Nomad also provides medicines, vaccinations, and mosquito nets for village clinics so that they can support the local communities.

Additionally, they run health education and awareness campaigns and projects so that communities can learn basic health protocols and protect themselves from common and preventable illnesses. This includes teaching the community about sanitation, safe water, and pregnancy and childcare.

Nomad Tanzania sources local ingredients and materials and employs local people to invest in the communities in which they operate. This supports the local economy and provides an income for the families that live alongside Nomad’s camps. Biashara means ‘business’ in Swahili. The way in which Nomad conduct their business in Tanzania is a huge part of what makes them the company they are today. From inception, their founders have always believed in investing in local communities and providing opportunities for both staff, and the wider community. From the way Nomad camps are built ways in which they source and purchase their interiors, to the micro-finance model that is unique within the industry.

Many villages on the outskirts of National Parks are sustained on a shoestring of resources and are in serious need of support. Nomad are staunch advocates of these communities and seek to offer help and support in whatever way possible, with a firm belief that they too should share in the spoils of tourism. As such, Nomad work to improve the basic healthcare and education opportunities for these communities, seeking to improve the situation faced by all individuals wherever possible.

The Watato Go Wild programme seeks to welcome local Tanzanian school children into various Nomad camps to identify top performing students and provide them with future career prospects by imparting first-hand skills and knowledge of the tourism industry. Collaborating with local schools, children can broaden their horizons by partaking in wildlife lessons and workshops, headed by experienced Nomad guides while embarking on safari game drives.

In the Beds for Meds initiative, Nomad staff actively search for spaces within camps, or an empty safari vehicle and guide, and use any opportunities to organise a medical outreach clinic for neighbouring communities. Working with health professionals from hospitals in Arusha and beyond, citizens of all ages from neighbouring villages are brought into camp to receive medical treatments. This initiative helps to fill the gaps in health services in remote communities. Camp teams are requested to remain vigilant, and upon finding individuals in need of plastic surgery or other specialised cases, they are put on planes to get the treatment they need from programme partners in Arusha.

Community training workshops are actively run-in neighbouring communities, focussing on relevant eco-friendly activities that can help families become more self-reliant and secure by diversifying their income options. Employment opportunities in villages bordering National Parks can often be quite limited, causing many communities to live off the land with few other available prospects, despite the risks and challenges. These workshops seek to educate, encourage and equip communities to be able to engage in ventures more financially sustainable, while promoting ecologically friendly land practices.

Nomad utilise their presence in Tanzania’s wild areas, and partnerships with well-established conservation institutions in order to help organise and fund internship opportunities for determined, conservation-minded young Tanzanians. These opportunities provide keen young adults with conservation focused field experience and the knowledge and understanding to be ambassadors for the environment back in their own communities.

The Frankfurt Zoological Society works to protect Serengeti’s wildlife, using patrol teams to remove snare-traps one by one. For every night’s stay at one of Nomad’s camps, one dollar is donated to the de-snaring Serengeti Programme.

Numerous Mogumu Hope Centres are based in the villages that border the Serengeti National Park, offering refuge to young girls fleeing from female genital mutilation (FGM). Although FGM is illegal in Tanzania, it is sadly still practiced in some rural villages. The centre works to ultimately reunite the girls with their parents on the agreement they will not be at risk of FGM or early child marriage, as well as raising community awareness, changing minds, and standing up for girl’s rights.

Nomad Tanzania works to protect the wildlife and environment from harm. Nomad tackles the threat posed by poachers and illegal bushmeat traders by supporting conservation organisations that monitor wildlife populations and protect these creatures from humans. Many communities face conflict with wildlife, especially when livestock are attacked, threatening the livelihood of local people. Nomad runs campaigns to persuade people to live harmoniously with wildlife and offer training for alternative sources of income to livestock agriculture, such as beekeeping and composting projects which both benefit the environment.

Nomad Tanzania runs several village clean-up projects in the villages that lie close to their camps and border the National Parks, gathering large groups of volunteers including football teams, schoolchildren and fishermen to help pick up rubbish and keep the villages clean. After this, rubbish is sorted and appropriately disposed of. Nomad also runs village film nights that display documentaries focusing on the challenge of waste disposal and the issues posed by waste plastic. These films educate the local communities and help to persuade people to keep the villages and surrounding areas clean and plastic-free. Nomad limits the amount of plastic used in their camps as much as possible to reduce the amount of waste plastic produced.

In the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the Maasai have lived alongside wildlife for decades, but as human populations increase, conflicts and pressure inevitably mount, sadly resulting in the decline of local lion populations. KopeLion is an initiative that seeks to alter this trend by employing former lion hunters and equipping them with the skills needed to actively protect the remaining lions and reduce conflicts with their local communities and villages.

Through the conservation and protection of grasslands, measures can be implemented to ensure healthy herds of wildlife, as well as communities of local Maasai and their livestock are able to contribute indefinitely to the overall health of the Maasai Steppe ecosystem and Tarangire National Park. The degradation of this delicate ecosystem poses devastating implications for local communities, and as such, the only way to combat this threat is to implement regulatory grazing measures to ensure lands are not left barren.

The Selous Game Reserve has unfortunately been severely affected by ivory poaching in the last decade, and the elephant population has suffered tremendously. Nomad are a firm supporter of the Selous Elephant Research Programme run by Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI). Monitoring the population movements and more, the TAWIRI team aim to provide valuable data and knowledge to ensure their long-term survival.

Ruaha Carnivore Project, part of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, works with local partners to come up with effective conservation strategies for carnivores within the wider Ruaha eco-system.

By sharing technical expertise, building local capacity and empowering women and girls, the Tuungane project is providing local people with the practical tools and information they need to build healthy and prosperous families, secure fish stocks, wildlife habitats, and adapt to climate change.

This education campaign aims to halt non-retaliatory killings of endangered lions in the Katavi ecosystem. Through fostering education in surrounding communities, they aim to protect the population for generations to come, thereby ensuring that endangered lion species populations can grow throughout subsequent generations.