Terms and conditions

How a trip with us is quoted, confirmed and run, what we are responsible for, and what we need from you. Written to be read, not to be got past.

Last updated 20 August 2026

Who these terms are between

These terms are between you and Nissa Safaris, a tour operator registered and operating in Kenya, run by the safari guide Nissa Ole Kinyaga. Where these terms say "we" or "us" they mean Nissa Safaris; "you" means the person making an enquiry or booking, and anyone else travelling on the same booking.

They cover two separate things: using this website, which anyone doing so accepts, and booking a trip with us, which applies once a trip is confirmed. If you are booking for other people, you confirm that you have their authority to do so and that you have passed these terms on to them.

What this website is, and is not

This is an information and enquiry site. It publishes no prices, takes no payment and has no booking engine. Nothing on it is an offer capable of being accepted: the itineraries, destinations and journey pages describe the kind of trip we build, and are an invitation for you to get in touch, not a contract on the table.

We write these pages carefully and correct them when we find something wrong, but park fees, lodge availability, permit allocations, road conditions and wildlife all change without telling us. Details are indicative until they are written into a quote for your specific dates.

Photographs show the places and animals we guide in. They are real frames from real trips, but no photograph is a promise of a sighting.

Quotes, and when a booking exists

Send us your dates and what you want from the trip, and Nissa builds an itinerary and puts it in writing to you. That written quote sets out what is included, what is not, and what it costs.

A booking exists when you accept that quote in writing and we confirm back that we have it. Until both of those have happened there is no booking and nothing is held for you. An enquiry, a phone call or a WhatsApp conversation on its own does not reserve anything, and lodges, conservancy beds, gorilla permits and balloon seats are allocated to whoever confirms first.

Your written quote carries its own payment, deposit and cancellation terms. Where anything in that quote differs from this page, the quote is what governs your trip. This page describes how we work in general; the quote is the agreement you actually made.

Prices and what moves them

We do not publish prices anywhere on this site, and we will not quote one until we know your dates, your party and where you want to go, because those are what determine it. Anyone quoting you a Nissa Safaris price that did not come from us in writing is not quoting for us.

A quote holds for the validity period stated on it. Several of the costs inside it are set by other people and can change after a quote is issued: national park and reserve entry fees, conservancy fees, government levies and taxes, gorilla and chimpanzee permit fees, and domestic flight fares. If one of those changes before your trip we will tell you what has changed and what it does to your total, with the evidence, rather than absorbing it silently or springing it on you late.

Paying

Payment is arranged directly with us, on the terms in your quote. No payment is ever taken through this website, and this website will never ask you for card details.

We will never send you new bank details by unsolicited message part-way through a booking. If you receive anything claiming to change our payment details, treat it as fraud, do not pay it, and call one of the numbers on our contact page to check with us first.

Changes and cancellations

If you need to change or cancel a confirmed trip, tell us in writing as early as you can, by email or WhatsApp to the addresses on the contact page. The date we receive that is the date we work from. What it costs you depends on the cancellation terms in your quote and on what the lodges, camps, charter operators and permit offices we have already committed to on your behalf will refund us, which is often nothing close to the trip date.

We may need to change parts of an itinerary ourselves. Roads wash out, parks and conservancies close sections, camps flood, aircraft are grounded and animals move. Where that happens we substitute the closest equivalent we can find, at no drop in standard, and tell you why.

We may cancel a trip outright where it cannot be run safely, or where a supplier fails us and there is no workable alternative. If we cancel for a reason that is ours, you are entitled to a refund of what you have paid us for the parts not delivered. That is a refund of our charges, and it is not the same as your out-of-pocket losses on flights and other arrangements you made yourself, which is what travel insurance is for.

Travel insurance is a condition of travelling

You must hold travel insurance for the whole trip, and we will ask you to confirm you have it. This is not a formality on a Kenyan safari.

Make sure the policy actually covers what you are doing.

Emergency medical treatment and, specifically, air evacuation. Several of the conservancies we guide in are hours from a road and the realistic way out of a serious problem is a light aircraft.
Cancellation, curtailment and delay, including your international flights.
The activities on your itinerary by name. Walking safaris, mountain trekking, diving and hot air balloon flights are excluded by some standard policies.
Baggage and, if you are bringing it, camera equipment, which is often capped well below what a long lens is worth.

Passports, visas and health requirements

Getting your travel documents right is yours to do, not ours. That means a passport valid well beyond your return date with enough blank pages, the correct entry authorisation for Kenya and for any other country on your itinerary, and any vaccination certificate required for your route, including yellow fever where your routing makes it mandatory.

We will tell you what we understand the requirements to be and flag anything we think will catch you out, but requirements change at short notice and the only authority on them is the issuing government and your own doctor. We cannot be responsible for a trip you are refused boarding for, or refused entry on, because a document was missing, and no refund arises from it.

If you take regular medication, bring enough for the whole trip plus a margin, in your hand luggage. Remote camps have no pharmacy.

Fitness, health and taking part

Tell us at the time of booking about any medical condition, mobility limitation, allergy or dietary requirement that affects your trip. We are not asking to be intrusive: it changes which camps work, how far we can walk, how long a game drive should run and what the kitchen needs to know. We would far rather build the right trip than discover the problem in the field.

Some trips ask more of you than others. Walking safaris cover uneven ground; the Mount Kenya treks involve sustained walking at altitude; gorilla and chimpanzee trekking can be steep, wet and long. Balloon operators set their own requirements, including on weight and on climbing unaided into and out of the basket, and those are theirs to enforce, not ours to waive.

If someone on a trip behaves in a way that puts other guests, staff, wildlife or themselves at real risk, and does not stop when asked, we may end their participation. In that situation we help them get to the nearest town or airstrip, at their cost, and no refund arises.

Wild animals, wild places, and your guide

A safari happens in wild country among free-ranging animals. That is the whole point of it, and it carries risk that no operator can remove. Elephant, buffalo, lion, hippo and snakes are dangerous, and they are not managed for your convenience.

You must follow your guide's instructions at all times, and immediately when given urgently. Do not leave the vehicle unless your guide tells you it is safe to; stay inside the vehicle profile on a game drive; do not walk in camp at night without an escort; do not feed or approach any animal. These are not house rules, they are the actual safety margin.

No sighting is guaranteed. We do not fence, bait or habituate anything to produce one. What we sell is a guide who has spent more than twenty years reading this country and will put you in the best place he knows, at the best hour, and explain what you are looking at. Some days that is a leopard on a branch at first light and some days it is a bird and a long conversation.

Lodges, camps, balloons, aircraft and other operators

Some parts of a trip we run ourselves, and some parts we book with other companies. It matters which is which.

Nissa guides the Kenya trips personally, and the vehicle and the guiding are ours. Lodges, tented camps, conservancies, domestic and charter airlines, hot air balloon operators, mountain guiding outfits and dive centres are independent businesses. We choose them, book them, brief them and chase them, and we stay your single point of contact throughout. We do not own or control them, they carry their own licences, insurance and safety procedures, and their own terms apply to what they provide.

Hot air balloon flights are flown by separately licensed balloon companies holding their own civil aviation approval, with their own pilots. We book your seats and fit the flight into your itinerary. We do not operate aircraft, and whether a flight goes ahead on the morning is the pilot's decision on the weather, not ours.

Where a supplier fails badly, we will press your case with them and help you document it. Our own liability for their failure is limited to having taken reasonable care in choosing and booking them.

Trips outside Kenya

The countries on our international journeys pages work differently, and we say so on every one of those pages. Nissa does not guide inside those countries. We plan the route, book the flights, lodges and permits, and stay your point of contact, and a ground operator licensed in that country runs the trip on the ground with its own vehicles and its own guides.

Those operators hold the permits and guiding accreditation their country requires, and their terms apply alongside these to the part of the trip they run.

Our responsibility, and its limits

We are responsible for arranging your trip with reasonable skill and care, and for the guiding and the vehicle where those are ours. Where we get that wrong, we are responsible for it.

We are not responsible for loss or damage caused by something outside our reasonable control, by an independent supplier beyond our care in choosing them, by another guest, by your own act or omission, or by your failure to follow safety instructions. We are not responsible for arrangements you make yourself and we did not book, including your international flights.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not permit us to limit. Where our liability is limited, it is limited to the amount you paid us for the part of the trip affected.

Events outside anyone's control

Neither of us is in breach of these terms for failing to do something made impossible by an event outside reasonable control. In this part of the world that realistically means extreme weather and flooding, impassable or closed roads, park, reserve or border closures by the authorities, outbreaks of disease and the public health measures taken against them, civil unrest, strikes, airline and airport disruption, aircraft grounding, fire, and wildlife or environmental events such as a river crossing that does not happen where or when it usually does.

If one of those disrupts a confirmed trip, we will do everything practical to rework it, and we will be straight with you about what we can and cannot recover from suppliers who are themselves affected.

Photographs from your trip

Nissa photographs on trips, and some of those frames end up in the gallery or on social media. If you would rather not be photographed, or are happy to be photographed but not published, say so at any point, at booking or in the vehicle, and that is the end of it. No explanation needed, and it changes nothing about your trip.

If a photograph of you is already published here and you want it taken down, email us and we will remove it. We do not ask why.

Photographs you take on your trip are yours. If you send us one and are happy for us to use it, we will credit you by whatever name you tell us to use.

If something goes wrong

Tell your guide, at the time. Almost everything that goes wrong on a safari can be fixed on the day it happens, and cannot be fixed at all once you are home. Nissa is with you on the Kenya trips, and on trips run by a partner operator you can reach us directly on the numbers on the contact page, whatever time it is.

If it is not resolved on the ground, write to us within a reasonable time of getting home with the detail and anything you have documenting it, and we will investigate it properly and come back to you.

Governing law

These terms and any trip booked under them are governed by the laws of Kenya, and the courts of Kenya have jurisdiction over any dispute. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this does not take away any protection you have under the mandatory law of your own country.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest of them still stand.

Changes to these terms

We update this page when the way we work changes. The version that applies to your trip is the one in force on the day your booking was confirmed, and we will not change your terms after that without telling you. The date at the top of this page is when it was last changed.

Questions about any of this

Email nissasafaris254@gmail.com or message WhatsApp. It reaches Nissa Ole Kinyaga directly, and a plain question gets a plain answer.