The check-in clerk at Heathrow spotted a logo as we handed over our passports and tickets. "Are you on a Guerba?" she asked. Then she was away: reminiscing, all smiles, telling us we'd have "a life-changing experience". She'd gone 16 years ago, camping across Morocco, and by the end they didn't even bother with the tents. She tied up the loose straps on my backpack and double-checked our seats, so misty-eyed that I might have chanced requesting an upgrade, if it wasn't so counter to the Guerba ethos.
Because Guerba are about adventure, and that peculiar substratum of package tours, the African overland expedition. The first sight of the truck in Nairobi the morning after was a bit of a shock - this was surely a vehicle to transport, say, smoking beagles rather than paying guests?
Once settled on board though, we didn't want to swap our vehicle for any other. The facing pews on this big, customised Mercedes truck were a good social space. With the tarpaulin rolled up, you could hang over the sides and let the sights and sounds - and dust and grit - of Kenya wash over you. Road trips felt like an event, shouting the Swahili greeting "Jambo!"- at children running out to wave. "This is a truck," commanded George, our driver. "I don't want to hear anyone call it a bus. Because I am not a bus driver."
George, it transpired, was so much more than a bus or even truck driver: a man who would regale us with alarming tales of animal attacks, danger, corruption, sickness and struggle on the road, which seem to cause his breed of overland tour leaders the same level of trauma as I'd experience packing a suitcase. All Guerba Kenya's staff are locals.
Full trans-African tours are the stuff of legend out here: George had done a few in his time, and talked of having one more in him. We, though, were on a simple week around Kenya. Amboseli was our first stop; a huge dust bowl of a park on the Tanzanian border. To stop further eroding the soil, vehicles have to keep to tracks that loop around the bare earth for miles, making it all too clear when no animals are likely to be seen. Down by the swamp of the lake we found elephant herds cooling off, and hippos' brows peeking out of the water. All too often sightings turned out to be wildebeest: a creature that Kenyans say was the last that God created from the leftover spare parts of others, and so deceiving hopeful tourist eyes.
But game drives and wildlife spotting were just a fraction of the experience. We pitched in a small bush camp, our tents dark shapes in the moonlight, and woke to see Mt Kilimanjaro above us. Gorgeous multi-coloured birds tried to share our meal, cooked over a fire - "Just starlings," grunted George - and Masai villagers dropped by to see who was camping.
We joined a young Masai warrior to see his village, walking across the plain together, him in robes and spear, us in sunhats, shades and trainers. It was a peculiar trip - riveting and yet awkward, as we peeked into another way of life and wondered how much was contrived for the visitor. A young man guided us through the village and answered our questions with immense courtesy and patience. We watched - and clumsily joined in - an extraordinary welcome dance of high leaping, genuflecting, and deep and sibilant chanting. The 20 small mud-huts in the walled village were barely high enough to stand up in, pitch dark bar a tiny window and a smoking fire, the tiny rooms sleeping perhaps seven kids.
But then we realised we were being escorted into an enormous makeshift market, selling the kind of crafts available anywhere in Kenya. Seeing we were reluctant to buy, one villager suddenly said in perfect English: "Come on. You've just had an authentic, individual experience." Well, we thought we had.
Back at the camp, we told George how much we had paid for our new souvenirs. George - a man who has hunted with bushmen, confronted poachers, knows Africa and was struggling manfully on through the pain of an overnight scorpion sting - laughed: "I always get ripped off by the Masai."
North of Nairobi is Naivasha, a lakeside town best known for its enormous flower factories, growing roses largely destined for British supermarkets - enterprises that employ whole townships of people who work, live and play in company-branded premises. Our new beds for the night were in what Guerba terms "comfortable camping" - essentially larger tents with camp-beds in an established site with hot showers, a bar, and flush toilets rather than the bat-ridden drop holes of Amboseli.
Something strange happened: rather than welcoming the increased luxury, we all missed the bush camping. And we also developed a weird antipathy to similar buses on the road: two other overland trucks pulled into the site, from rival companies, and every group proceeded to cold shoulder the other. There was a slight detente later at the camp bar's pool table, but we were unnaturally thrilled to beat them.
From a boat on Lake Naivasha, we watched small armies of pelicans advance in formation on the water's surface, opening their jaws to scoop up fish. Later, we headed out to Mount Longonot, a national park where giraffe and buffalo roam on the outer rim of a volcano. We were guided on the two-hour walk up the hot and dusty slopes by a ranger from the Wildlife Protection Services, ostensibly to protect us from stray buffalo. But he also explained the symbiotic relationships of whistling thorn trees where ants nest in the pods, and managed to point out animals that we would have missed camouflaged against the scrub. The top was breathtaking: a small track runs for 11km around the rim, high above a verdant crater full of trees and peregrine falcons speeding to nests in the cliffs.
Further north-west is Lake Nakuru, which gives its name to a rolling, wooded national park around it. From a distance, the lake looked stained with pink: up close, the colour was revealed to be the most incredible flock of flamingoes. For good measure, we found a mother and baby rhino, watched a pride of lions, and pitched camp for the night somewhat nervously under a tree full of baboons.
We took the truck for one last, long leg down to the Masai Mara Reserve, whose renown is well deserved: we saw crocodiles, lion cubs, abundant elephants, and more zebra and wildebeest than I could have hoped for, in a landscape far more attractive than Amboseli. Carcasses littered the fields: while we never saw the leopards or cheetahs, evidence of predators was all around.
Game drives done, our truck parked incongruously outside a luxury, tented lodge, too tall to pass through the gate. Three breakdowns and 11 jolty hours on crumbling tracks from Nairobi had tested our love for roughing it in the truck to the limits. But then we got clean in en-suite bathrooms, ate in the restaurant and slept in beds with electric bedside lamps, and felt thoroughly bored. Where was the chatter of monkeys and cry of hyenas, the campfire and latent fear of being eaten? Sometimes, less really is more.
Way to go
Gwyn Topham travelled as a guest of Guerba. A seven-day Kenyan overland camping safari with Guerba starts at £355 (land only) plus a local payment of US$115. Flights start from £463, including taxes, with Kenya Airways. Departures weekly from June. A variety of other tours at different levels of comfort and visiting other parts of Kenya and Africa are available. For more information call Guerba on 01373 826 611 or see www.guerba.co.uk.
