Governors' Balloon Safaris

You lift off at dawn from a sheltered launch site at Little Governors' Camp, drift with the air currents over riverine forest and open grassland, and land on the plains roughly forty-five minutes to an hour later for a cooked breakfast under the sky. That is what Governors' Balloon Safaris does, and it has been doing it the same way since 1978.

The operation was started by the Grammaticas family, who had established Governors' Camp on the Mara River in 1972. The route has not changed: along the river and across stretches of the Mara that vehicles cannot reach, which is part of why the flight is useful beyond the view — the balloons have tracked areas of riverine forest over the years, and the operators credit the aerial monitoring with helping rhino numbers in the area recover.

The balloons are built in Australia by Kavanagh Balloons to a safari specification, with reinforced baskets padded internally for passenger comfort at landing, and carry up to sixteen passengers. Pilots hold commercial ratings from the US, UK, or Australia, generally with ten to twenty years and over a thousand hours of flying experience each. The combined pilot team has logged more than two hundred and twenty-five years in the air and over twenty-five thousand hours.

On landing, sparkling wine is poured — a tradition that has run since the early days. The operation holds Kenya Civil Aviation Authority Air Operator's Certificate number 011 and is audited each year by both the authority and an independent aviation inspector.