Singita Sasakwa Lodge

On Sasakwa Hill, above the plains of the Serengeti's western corridor, a stone manor house with deep verandas looks over grassland that the wildebeest cross each year. Singita Sasakwa Lodge stands in the Grumeti Reserves of northern Tanzania. It was built in the manner of an Edwardian country house rather than a safari camp, with its cottages stepping down the slope below and a view that runs west across the grass for tens of kilometres.

History

The land around Sasakwa was hunting country until the early 2000s. The American investor Paul Tudor Jones then took on the concessions along the western corridor, stopped hunting on them and founded the Grumeti Fund to pay for anti-poaching patrols, research and community work. The reserves cover about 350,000 acres and share an unfenced boundary with Serengeti National Park, so animals move freely between the two.

Singita runs the lodges on the reserve. The company began in 1993 with a single lodge in the Sabi Sand, on South African land bought by Luke Bailes's grandfather in 1925, and Grumeti was its first venture in East Africa. Sasakwa is the most formal of its houses here. Sabora Tented Camp, Faru Faru Lodge and the exclusive-use Serengeti House stand elsewhere on the reserve.

Architecture and design

The main house is built of stone, with high ceilings, broad verandas and a terrace along the brow of the hill. Inside, the rooms hold antiques, oil paintings and old carpets, closer in feeling to an English country house abroad than to the canvas and thatch of most Serengeti lodges. The cottages below are spaced well apart, and each looks out over the plains rather than at its neighbours.

Rooms and suites

There are about ten cottages, each with a private plunge pool on its own terrace, a sitting area and a bathroom facing the view. The Hillside Suite is larger, with four bedrooms and its own pool, and is let as a house for families or groups of friends travelling together.

Dining

Meals are taken on the terrace, in the dining room or out on the reserve. Singita keeps a wine cellar at Sasakwa built largely around South African estates, and the company runs a community culinary school at Grumeti that trains young cooks from the surrounding villages.

Wellness

The lodge has a spa, a gym, a tennis court and a main swimming pool. Its equestrian centre keeps a stable of horses for riding safaris among zebra and wildebeest, which is possible because the reserve is private land. Riding is not allowed inside the national park, and nor are night drives or walking safaris, all of which Grumeti offers.

Location

The western corridor runs from the central Serengeti towards Lake Victoria, and the Grumeti River crosses it. The migration usually moves through between May and July, and the river crossings, with crocodiles waiting in the pools, fall in the middle of that season. The rest of the year the reserve keeps resident herds of plains game, with lion, leopard, cheetah, elephant and buffalo.

Serengeti National Park was established in 1951 and listed by UNESCO in 1981. For most guests the journey to this luxury lodge in the Serengeti is a light-aircraft flight from Arusha or Kilimanjaro International Airport to the Sasakwa airstrip, at the foot of the hill, followed by a drive of a few minutes up to the house.