The hard case
You are marrying in the long rains
It is the most common awkward question we get, and it has three genuine answers rather than one piece of reassurance.
What April and May are actually like
Rain most afternoons rather than all day, often heavy and short. Grass tall enough to hide a lion, which makes game viewing genuinely harder. Some camps close for the season. Some airstrips become difficult. Humidity high on the coast.
Also: nearly empty, extraordinarily green, the best birding of the year, and skies that photograph better than anything the dry season produces.
Answer one: go to Rwanda or Uganda
Gorilla trekking runs every month of the year. Rain makes the forest muddier and the walk harder; it does not close it, and the forest is wet at the best of times.
Rwanda in particular is well suited to a rainy-season honeymoon: short transfers on good roads, excellent lodges, and a trip that works at five or six nights so you are not exposed to the weather for a fortnight.
Answer two: go anyway, at green-season rates
The same camp can be thirty to forty per cent less than in August, minimum stays relax, upgrades become likely, and you will frequently have a camp almost to yourselves.
Who this genuinely suits
Couples who would rather have eight nights at an excellent camp than five at the same one, and who do not mind sitting out a storm with a book.
It does not suit anyone for whom this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip with a fixed list of things they must see. In that case the weather risk is carrying too much.
Answer three: move the honeymoon
Two or three months after the wedding, which puts you into June or July. It costs nothing but patience and it is more common than anybody says out loud.
The version that works best: a long weekend somewhere easy immediately after the wedding, and the real trip later in the year. Several couples have told us afterwards that having something to look forward to through the summer was better than going straight away.
What we would not do
Tell you April is fine in the Masai Mara because we would like the booking. It is wet, the grass is long, and you would be paying for a compromised version of the thing you wanted.
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