HOTELS & CAMPS

Lemala Kuria Hills

LuxuryNorthern Serengeti

The northern Serengeti is not short of expensive, excellent lodges. What is rare is one where the position is good enough, the rooms comfortable enough and the service genuinely high — and the price is unusually kind. Kuria Hills stands exactly there, and every suite comes with its own plunge pool.

Why we chose it

It marries position and design unusually well. The lodge is tucked into the Wogakuria hills of the northern Serengeti, close to the Mara River and squarely in the corridor the migration moves through; the camp is built cleverly among huge granite boulders and hillside, high enough for an open outlook and with far more layering and privacy than camps set out on flat grass.

The rooms are the other main reason, and the specification is high: just 15 suites, all of them large, built around full-height glass, with a complete en-suite bathroom, bathtub, indoor and outdoor showers, a generous deck and power around the clock — and, rarest of all, a private plunge pool with every suite, plus a main pool and the Melengali spa at the central camp. Keeping that level of comfort and privacy this deep into the bush near the Mara River is unusual in itself. Add Lemala’s settled service and cooking, and the reputation has stayed consistently high.

Our verdict

What makes Kuria Hills unusual is the combination: the geography of the Mara River area, rooms and facilities of a genuinely high standard (a private pool comes as standard), and Lemala’s mature service — which lifts the northern night by a clear step. And its price, measured against northern lodges of the same standard, is excellent: you are not paying Ultra-luxury money, but what you get comes very close to it. That "good, and good value" is exactly why we recommend it.

If it is full

Sayari Camp (Asilia, the Luxury tier in the northern Serengeti — our usual fallback when this one is full).

The suite and its deck read as one space: a four-poster under netting, a full wall of glass slid open onto timber decking, and at the far end of that deck the small pool that belongs to this suite alone — the private plunge pool the copy means. Beyond it, treetops, and then the northern Serengeti plains.

The main pool at the central camp: loungers along the timber deck, nothing blocking the far end, and the view carrying over the trees to rolling green hills. Taken in the green season, hence the colour — in the dry months the same view is gold.

The fire pit sits directly under a huge granite boulder: a round stone terrace, an iron fire bowl in the middle, sofas, armchairs and brass hurricane lamps around it, and the ground falling away to grassland on the right. If you want to see what "built among boulders and hillside" means, this is the photo.

A sundowner laid out on the rocks at the end of the day: bean bags and cushions on the stone, a striped cloth over the bar table with bottles, glasses and two ice buckets, and green plains below running out to a line of hills on the horizon. The camp sits high enough that this kind of view is a short walk away.

Official websitehttps://www.lemalacamps.com/stay/kuria-hills-lodge/(opens in a new tab)

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