Loisaba Game Lodge by John Borthwick

A cheetah perched atop a mound with her two cubs holds a pose in perfect profile. You¹d swear she had trained at the National Geographic school of modelling. Unfazed by our safari car, she gives us two minutes of photo time before descending from (literally) her catwalk and sauntering off. Kenya is Africa red in tooth and claw, as well as a place of creature comforts, especially in game lodges such as Loisaba on the Laikipia Plateau.

In the jungle, the lion sleeps tonight ‹ although not like you in your sumptuous Starbed at Loisaba. The unique cottages known as Starbeds overlook a river and dam where elephants often gather for a convivial sundowner. Your vantage point is a raised platform house with a thatch roof and full bathroom. Here you are attended by a bevy of stately Samburu butlers - blanket-garbed warriors. But the unique feature is the "star bed", a canopied, king-sized bed mounted on wheels. Come sleep-time your butler rolls it out onto your balcony deck from where you may simultaneously dream and star-gaze.

A day of game-spotting here might find you amid hundreds of eland, gazelle, wildebeest, hyenas and zebras, or face-to-face with a bull elephant who¹s flapping his massive ears like a pair of spinnakers, suggesting strongly that your toy safari car gets out of his way, now.

Loisaba, a 24,400 hectare private estate on the Laikipia plateau, is run by the very hospitable Cadot family who work hard to make sure that, whether in a Starbed or a luxurious stone cottage, your days are full of game drives, sundowners and dinner conversations during which someone will inevitably say, "You should have seen this cheetah".