Kusini Serengeti

The Story

In 2003, three safari operators who had spent years working the quiet edges of Tanzania pooled their camps and their convictions. Mark Houldsworth brought the northern Serengeti, Richard Bonham the southern wilderness, Roland Purcell the west. They called the result Nomad, and the philosophy was direct: guides matter more than thread counts, and if you can walk, you should.

In December 2025, Nomad opened Kusini on the kopje plains of the southern Serengeti. Six tents on a site where a larger camp once stood, halved in capacity and rebuilt around the principle that walking is how you meet the bush properly. The kopje landscape, with its resident predators and its year-round solitude, is the kind of territory that rewards patience.

The walking starts from the front door.

Location

The southern Serengeti operates on a different rhythm. Here, the granite kopjes  (rock outcrops rising from volcanic grasslands) function as the ecosystem’s anchor points: water catchments in the wet, shade and shelter in the dry, permanent den sites for leopard and lion. Predators hold territory among these rocks year-round, regardless of whether the herds are present.

Kusini sits among the kopjes in the least-visited sector of the national park. The camp occupies a position among granite formations and whistling thorns with open views across the plains the kind of sightlines where a cheetah hunt unfolds at distance, in full, without a scramble to reposition. There are typically no other vehicles in sight. Twelve guests and a great deal of silence.

The volcanic ash soil that defines this landscape is what draws over a million wildebeest south each December. The grasses it produces support calving that peaks in January and February, and the predator response is immediate: lion prides, cheetah coalitions, hyena clans, all drawn to the abundance on the open plains. The documentary filmmaker Alan Root spent two years in this landscape, filming what Nomad describes as the “cities of the Serengeti.” Each kopje functions as a vertical ecosystem: rock hyrax, agama lizard, klipspringer, and the predators that have learned to hunt among them.

From June to November, when the herds have moved north and the seasonal camps with them, this corner of the Serengeti belongs to the resident predators and to whoever is willing to share it with them.

Rooms

Six canvas tents, identical in layout, raised on wooden platforms among the whistling thorn acacias. Each has a king-size bed that converts to twin, an en-suite bathroom with flush toilet and powerful shower, and a private veranda facing the plains. The furnishings are comfortable rather than elaborate. This is a camp built for the landscape, not the room.

There is no air conditioning. Cooling comes from elevation, canvas ventilation, and whatever breeze the plains offer. Wi-Fi reaches the tents but operates at the mercy of a satellite connection. Canvas walls mean the night sounds come in: lion contact calls, hyena, the wind across the kopjes. For most guests this is the point; for a small number it will test their sleep.

Communal Areas

The main mess area serves as the camp’s hub: morning briefings, meals between drives, the transition point between the day’s two rhythms. Dining is communal and full-board with house drinks, served around a long table where twelve guests is the maximum company.

The real gathering happens outside. Sundowners on the granite outcrops above camp, bush dinners under the stars on the kopje plateaus; these are Nomad’s signature at Kusini, and the reason the mess itself functions as a launching point rather than a destination. The campfire pulls the group together after dark.

There is no pool and no spa. The camp makes no apology for this and none is needed.

Activities

Game drives run twice daily in closed-sided Land Cruisers with pop-up roofs, a Serengeti National Park regulation rather than a Nomad choice. Every booking includes a private guide and vehicle, which removes the negotiation for exclusivity entirely. Morning drives begin before dawn across the open kopje plains. Afternoon drives pick up the light as it turns golden on the granite.

Lion sightings are High year-round and Very High during the calving season. Cheetah likelihood is equally High, and the open terrain gives full visibility to hunts that unfold across hundreds of metres. Leopard are High in the kopje habitat, where rock crevices provide permanent den sites. Elephant and buffalo hold High likelihood throughout the year. Giraffe, which seem to congregate around the camp with particular enthusiasm, are Very High. This is Big Four territory; rhino are confined to the Moru Kopjes further north.

The wildebeest calving season, from December to March, brings over a million animals onto these southern plains. The predator concentration that follows is what draws the seasonal camps south each year. Kusini, being permanent, is already here.

This is where Kusini distinguishes itself. Nomad’s founding question (“Why drive when you can walk?”) is literal here. Walks of two to four hours, led by highly experienced guides alongside an armed ranger, take guests off the vehicle tracks and into the grassland at animal height. The perspective shifts: fresh tracks, dung beetles at work, the sound discipline required when a buffalo herd is feeding upwind.

The Serengeti Cheetah Project has studied wild cheetahs in this region since 1975. Kusini hosts in-camp evening presentations where SCP researchers share current data and sighting records, and the Cheetah Watch programme invites guests to contribute their own observations. It is the kind of conservation access that arrives without a surcharge and leaves you knowing more about what you saw.

Bush breakfasts on the plains, sundowners on kopje outcrops, and stargazing from a landscape with no light pollution complete the daily rhythm. Birding is productive year-round.