Tanzania's Mwiba Lodge offers a luxury safari at the top of its game
The last leg of your journey to Mwiba Lodge, a new tented camp in a luxurious league of its own, is a 40-minute flight that lifts you over Tanzania’s Serengeti Plain until the Great Rift Valley opens on to a sky-high plateau like something out of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. The Northern Air charter plane from the international gateway city of Arusha lands on a grassy strip dramatically close to the plateau’s edge, where a waiting Land Cruiser whisks you off to the lodge.
The local staff greets you, with warm hand towels and Champagne, on a platform in the middle of the bush. Mwiba Lodge, it turns out, is all around you, scattered among the massive boulders and vegetation, connected by wooden walkways and perched on an escarpment overlooking a river gorge—all surrounded by a 125,000-acre private wildlife reserve.
First up is a visit to your ‘tent’. Mwiba’s eight canvas-sided suites are all but invisible to one another, with proper doors, hardwood floors and decks cantilevered over a rushing river with chaises ready for post-safari snoozing. The canopied king-size beds have green air-conditioning systems that cool the bed areas. The living space has linen-covered sofas and copper lamps, while the bathrooms have soaking tubs, indoor and outdoor showers and antique fixtures. It’s not only sexy and theatrical, something most safari accommodations are not, but offers the height of luxury: Complete peace and solitude. (If it feels like Aspen came to Africa, that may not be a coincidence—Friedkin recently became chairman of the board of Auberge Resorts, which owns Aspen’s newly renovated Hotel Jerome.)
(This story appears in the Nov-Dec 2014 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)