Balloon Adventure

Balloon Adventure offers balloon flights in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve. The Mara is the northernmost part of the spectacular Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, home to the “Great Migration” and scores of other wildlife, including lions, cheetahs, elephants, rhinos, hippos, and crocodiles.

Our balloon is made in Bristol, England, by Cameron balloons. Cameron is the most experienced builder of “safari ride” balloons in the world, having placed balloons in Africa for over 30 years. We operate one “A415” balloons and its envelope holds 415,000 cubic feet of air. To heat the air inside the envelope, we use state-of-the-art “shadow and stealth” burners, which are designed to make as little noise as possible, thus decreasing our impact on the environment.

Our baskets are specially designed and have been modified over the years to accommodate the particular demands of safari-flying. The baskets are divided into 4 compartments, each able to accommodate up to 4 people. For safety and comfort, the sides of the baskets are relatively high and well padded. There are also well-cushioned seats and secure handles made of rope for use during take-off and landing.

Pilots

Our pilots hold commercial pilot licenses and undergo stringent annual checks by experienced examiners, as required by Kenyan law.

Chief Pilot : Donatas Stakeliunas

Donatas was born in Lithuania. At a very young age while growing up in Jonava he started building balloon models from paper. This hobby was growing and in year 1991 he along with his friends build a 900 cubic meter size balloon from a polyethylene film which they did tethered flights all summer . Subsequently in year 1992 build a bigger balloon of 1600 cubic meter.

Then he started participating with Lithuanian National Balloon team in European and World Balloon Championship. Subsequently with the passion for ballooning he participated in many balloon Championships and got many awards for the same. Got 3rd place in World Hot Air Balloon Championship with Lithuanian National Balloon Team in Bad Waltersdorf, Austria, 1999. Second in Lithuanian National Balloon Championship 2004.

He had also worked with Ballooning Company in Germany where he was crew as well as pilot for flying mostly advertizing balloon of special shapes like forklift, ice cream, box and etc.

He has balloon pilot license since 1995 and since then he has flown in different countries and has an experience of 500hours on Small Balloons, 800 hours on big Balloons.

He is multilingual and can speak German, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian apart from English.

In his past time he enjoys reading about trains and planes. He also has fixed Wing Student Pilot license.

Before coming to Kenya he was flying in Turkey with big balloons with a capacity of 24 people. He likes the topography of Masai Mara and look forward for a wonderful experience here.