It's an unforgettable sight, the twice-annual ebb and flow of animals - zebras, blue wildebeests and gazelles among them - across the vast, primeval-seeming Serengeti Plain in northern Tanzania and neighboring Kenya. Visitors head to East Africa from all over to witness this,  one of the largest such migrations in the world.

Nduara Loliondo, a safari camp within the Serengeti ecosystem, parallels these peregrinations, moving in six-month intervals between northern and southern Loliondo. The camp, run by an aptly named company, Nomad Tanzania, was created with the help of designers Chris Payne and Emma Campbell, British expatriates whose Nairobi-based firm is called Interior Idea. Asked by two of Nomad's founding directors, Milly and Mark Houldsworth, to upgrade their existing camp, the Idea team suggested that they "turn everything on its head", Payne says.

In the case of Nduara Loliondo, all roads led to the yurt, the circular tents that have sheltered Mongolians and other nomadic cultures for centuries. (Nduara means "circle" in Swahili, Tanzania's national language). For the Houldsworths, the idea was a natural: Milly Houldsworth's brother is a "hippie yurt maker", as Campbell teasingly points out, and the couple had long discussed "how fun it would be to do a yurt-y thing" she says.