I want to be honest about something before I describe this itinerary: this is not primarily a golf trip with some safari attached. It's a life trip with golf built into it. The clients I send on this circuit are the ones who've done the standard golf holidays — Portugal fifteen times, Scotland circuit, Dubai and back — and have started asking whether there's something more. The answer is yes. It's here.
**The structure**
Nairobi (two nights, one round) → Amboseli or Maasai Mara safari (three nights, no golf, no apology) → Arusha Tanzania (one night) → Zanzibar (four nights, two rounds) → Mauritius (five nights, three rounds). Sixteen nights total. Two safari vehicles, three ocean coastlines, four countries, and six rounds of golf that each feel earned.
**Nairobi: Muthaiga and the opening round**
Muthaiga Golf Club is the oldest club in East Africa — founded 1913, members who have been coming here since before independence, a clubhouse that looks unchanged since the 1940s and smells of leather and old wood in the best possible way. The course is parkland at 5,700 feet above sea level; the altitude adds roughly 10% to ball flight, which catches everyone off guard on the first tee.
We always play Muthaiga on arrival day two — a morning round, leisurely pace, eighteen holes that feel genuinely colonial-era in atmosphere without being uncomfortable about it. Green fee: approximately $120 USD for international visitors.
Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club provides the alternative for groups wanting to stay on-course. More modern, excellent condition, good pool. We use both depending on group preference.
**The safari: three days without phones**
I do not apologise for the safari segment and I never will. Clients who come on this trip expecting pure golf are gently told during consultation that the Maasai Mara or Amboseli section is non-negotiable — not because I can't remove it, but because removing it would be like visiting Japan and skipping Kyoto. You simply don't do it.
Three nights in a tented camp — we use Governors' Camp in the Mara or Satao Camp in Tsavo depending on season and what the groups want to see. The morning and evening game drives produce the kind of sightings that make phone cameras feel inadequate. Every group has had at least one predator interaction that someone at home refuses to believe.
No golf. Full stop. This is the reset.
**Zanzibar: two rounds in a completely different world**
Zanzibar Island hosts two courses worth our attention: Vipingo Ridge Golf Resort on the northern mainland coast (a two-hour ferry and short transfer from Stone Town), and the more accessible Zanzibar Golf Club, a parkland course near the airport that's modest but charming in the way that only courses without pretension can be.
Vipingo Ridge is the headline — a Rick Otto design cut through coastal scrub with ocean views from the back nine that justify the journey alone. Green fee $180 USD. We stay at a property near Nungwi beach on the north coast — Zuri Zanzibar or Essque Zalu — and do Stone Town as a half-day tour between rounds.
Stone Town itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the historical centre of the East African spice trade. Walking it in the early morning, before the tourists arrive, with the call to prayer echoing off the coral-stone buildings: this is one of the best hours you can spend anywhere in the world.
**Mauritius: the finish**
After Zanzibar, Mauritius feels deliberately luxurious — a conscious gear shift into the full resort experience after two weeks of adventure. We always use the south or east coast: Heritage Le Telfair, Four Seasons Anahita, or Constance Le Prince Maurice depending on budget. Three rounds across Heritage Golf Club, Constance Belle Mare, and Anahita — some of the finest conditions in the Indian Ocean basin.
The logic of ending in Mauritius rather than Zanzibar is simple: after two weeks of early starts and moving camps, clients want to decelerate into something genuinely luxurious before flying home. Mauritius provides it. Zanzibar doesn't quite — it's too raw, too real, to land at Heathrow directly from.
**What this costs**
This is our most expensive itinerary. Business class throughout, premium safari camps, five-star Indian Ocean resorts: £9,000 to £11,500 per person for sixteen nights. Economy class and mid-range camps bring it to £6,200 to £7,500.
We've had couples do this on honeymoon at the higher end. We've had societies do it at the lower end by sharing vehicles and going two-to-a-room. The itinerary scales; the experience doesn't diminish.
**The one thing**
Every person who has done this trip has said some version of the same thing: I didn't know golf travel could be this. That's the one thing I want anyone reading this to hold onto. Golf is the thread running through it, but the experience is broader than golf — it's the Mara at dawn, the Stone Town alley at seven in the morning, the Mauritius ocean at midnight. Golf is what brings our clients to these places. The places are what they remember.
James Whitmore
Golf Travel Specialist · View profile →
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