Wild Hope with Ami Vitale
A Private Air Expedition Through Kenya & the Seychelles
Focused on Conservation, Access, and the Stories Shaping Africa’s Future
On February 15 – 24, 2027, Bushtracks will fly a new expedition unlike anything else in our portfolio.
Called Wild Hope with Ami Vitale, the 10-day journey travels by private air through Kenya and the Seychelles, bringing together wildlife, conservation, photography, and some of East Africa’s most important landscapes alongside one of the most respected voices in conservation storytelling today: Ami Vitale.
Co-hosted by Ami Vitale and Bushtracks co-founder David Tett, the expedition is limited to just six guests and was developed in collaboration with Six Senses.
This is not a photography workshop. It is an immersive, conservation-focused expedition designed to offer rare access to the people, projects, landscapes, and wildlife stories shaping modern conservation across Kenya — while ending in one of the Indian Ocean’s most remote island settings.
Why This Expedition Exists
For more than three decades, Ami Vitale has documented some of the world’s most significant conservation stories — from the final years of Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, to community-led wildlife initiatives throughout Africa.
Her work has consistently focused on the intersection of people, wildlife, and coexistence: not only the animals themselves, but the communities, scientists, rangers, and conservationists working to protect them.
Wild Hope was built around that same idea.
Rather than moving quickly from camp to camp simply to check off wildlife sightings, this expedition is designed to create deeper understanding and context around conservation in East Africa today — while still delivering the extraordinary wildlife encounters and landscapes that define safari.
Guests will travel alongside Ami and David into regions that are both ecologically significant and operationally difficult to reach through traditional safari logistics.
Private air access allows the itinerary to move efficiently between remote conservancies, helicopter-access regions, and private conservation areas without losing valuable time to commercial routing and long overland transfers.
Ol Pejeta Conservancy & the Northern White Rhino Story
One of the expedition’s central experiences takes place at Ol Pejeta Conservancy, home to the last two female northern white rhinos on Earth.
Guests will spend time with members of the team directly involved in their protection, as well as the ongoing scientific and conservation efforts surrounding the species. Time on the conservancy also includes discussions with researchers, conservation leadership, and anti-poaching teams working at the forefront of rhino protection in Africa.
This is one of the stories Ami Vitale has documented extensively over the years, and one that has become symbolic of both the fragility of wildlife conservation and the global effort to reverse biodiversity loss.
Wildlife experiences at Ol Pejeta are complemented by time in the field with guides and researchers working across the conservancy’s broader ecosystem, including lion monitoring and elephant conservation programs.
Northern Kenya from the Air
Another defining element of Wild Hope is a full-day helicopter expedition across northern Kenya.
Flying low over the Suguta Valley and surrounding landscapes, guests will cross lava fields, desert terrain, volcanic formations, sand dunes, ephemeral lakes, and salt flats that are inaccessible by traditional safari vehicles.
From the air, enormous flamingo populations gather in shifting formations across alkaline lakes, while the scale and geological isolation of northern Kenya becomes fully apparent in a way that is difficult to understand from the ground.
Landings throughout the day allow guests to spend time in places few travelers ever reach — not as scenic flyovers, but as opportunities to understand the landscapes themselves.
This portion of the expedition reflects one of Bushtracks’ core philosophies around private air travel in Africa: access is not simply about comfort or efficiency. It changes the depth and scope of what becomes possible.
Sarara, Reteti & Community-Led Conservation
In Kenya’s Mathews Range, guests will stay at Sarara Camp, one of the most important community-owned conservation success stories in East Africa.
Time here includes private access to Reteti Elephant Sanctuary — the first community-owned elephant sanctuary in Africa and the subject of Ami Vitale’s documentary Shaba.
Unlike traditional wildlife tourism experiences, Reteti focuses on rescue, rehabilitation, and coexistence between wildlife and local communities living alongside elephants in northern Kenya.
Guests will spend time with the teams involved in elephant care and conservation while also gaining broader insight into how conservation models increasingly depend on local ownership and community participation to succeed long term.
The region itself is equally remarkable: rugged mountains, dry riverbeds, vast night skies, and some of Kenya’s least-visited safari landscapes.
Loisaba Conservancy & Modern Conservation in Practice
The expedition continues at Loisaba Conservancy, a major wildlife corridor supporting elephant migration, predator populations, and conservation partnerships across northern Kenya.
Here, guests explore the conservancy through game drives, bush walks, and time with conservation and anti-poaching teams working on the ground.
Loisaba represents a modern model of conservation in East Africa — one where tourism, wildlife protection, local employment, research, and land management are directly interconnected.
Wildlife sightings may include elephant, lion, leopard, reticulated giraffe, Grevy’s zebra, and a wide range of birdlife adapted to Kenya’s northern ecosystems.
Ending in the Seychelles at Six Senses Zil Pasyon
After Kenya, the expedition concludes in the Seychelles at Six Senses Zil Pasyon.
Reached by helicopter and surrounded by granite outcrops and turquoise water, the property offers a dramatically different pace and setting from the expedition’s safari portion.
The final days are intentionally designed as a moment to rest, reflect, and absorb the experience of the journey — combining wellness, privacy, ocean access, and time to simply slow down after an intense and emotionally rich expedition through Kenya.
Guests can spend time snorkeling, kayaking, hiking the island, enjoying Six Senses’ wellness programming, or simply taking in one of the Indian Ocean’s most extraordinary settings.
Rather than feeling disconnected from the safari itself, the Seychelles finale acts as a natural extension of the expedition’s broader themes: wildlife, landscape, restoration, and the relationship between humans and the natural world.
A Different Kind of Safari
Wild Hope is intentionally small.
With just six guests traveling together by private air, the expedition is designed to remain intimate, flexible, and deeply experiential.
It is for travelers who want more than wildlife sightings alone — people interested in conservation, photography, storytelling, science, landscapes, and understanding the complexity behind protecting wild places in the modern world.
At the same time, it remains unmistakably Bushtracks: exceptional camps, expert guiding, carefully designed logistics, and access that would be difficult to replicate independently.
Africa is changing rapidly. Conservation is evolving rapidly too.
Wild Hope was created to explore both.
