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Few holidays change a person the way a safari does. Not in the vague, platitudinous sense that travel broadens the mind, but in the very specific sense that when a lioness walks past your open vehicle close enough for you to see the amber of her eyes, something shifts permanently in your understanding of the world and your place in it.
Africa does this. It has been doing it to travellers for well over a century, and it shows no signs of stopping.
Whether you are drawn to the wide, sun-scorched plains of the Masai Mara, where the sheer density of wildlife beggars belief, or to the remote floodplains of the Okavango, where an afternoon on a mokoro canoe in near-total silence feels like a dispatch from another age entirely, an African safari is not the kind of holiday you forget. It is, if we are honest about it, the kind of holiday that makes most other holidays feel rather inadequate by comparison.
At Africa Travel, we have been planning these trips since 1992. We know the camps worth staying in and the ones to avoid. We know which guiding team in the South Luangwa is transformative and which is merely adequate. We know when to book the Serengeti for the Migration crossings and why leaving it too late almost always ends in disappointment. That knowledge is what we bring to every itinerary we build.
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This is the question we are asked more than any other, and the answer depends almost entirely on what kind of traveller you are.
East Africa is the safari of the imagination. Kenya's Masai Mara and Tanzania's Serengeti are the landscapes that live in photographs, ochre plains stretching to a horizon broken only by a lone acacia or the silhouette of an elephant against a blood-orange sunset. The wildlife here is almost absurdly abundant. A single morning drive in the Mara can produce lions, leopards, cheetahs and elephants before you have had breakfast, and in the months when the Migration crosses the Mara River, it delivers one of the most visceral natural spectacles on the planet: hundreds of thousands of wildebeest flinging themselves into crocodile-filled water in a chaos of dust, noise and raw biological urgency. Nothing prepares you for it, not even having read about it all your life.
Southern Africa is a different kind of experience, quieter, more varied in landscape and often more exclusive in feel. Botswana made a deliberate policy decision to limit visitor numbers and keep tourism low-volume, high-value. The result is that you arrive in the Okavango Delta to find an enormous private concession essentially to yourself. The wildlife behaves accordingly, because vehicles are not a constant presence in their lives. In Zambia, you leave the vehicle altogether, the walking safari was invented here in the 1950s, and it remains the most immersive way there is to experience the African bush. And South Africa offers something no other destination quite replicates: world-class Big Five game viewing within easy reach of Cape Town, the Winelands, and some of the finest restaurants in the southern hemisphere.
The honest answer is that many of our most loyal clients started with East Africa and came back wanting Southern Africa next. Then they come back again. Africa is not a destination you experience once and cross off a list.
Destination | Best Known For | Best Time to Visit | Perfect For |
Masai Mara & classic savannahs | July – October | First-timers, Great Migration, Masai cultural encounters | |
Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater & Zanzibar | June – October | Wildlife density, Migration calving season, beach & bush combinations | |
Kruger, Cape Town & malaria-free Reserves | May – September | Families, first-timers, combining safari with a world-class city break | |
Okavango Delta & Chobe National Park | June – October | Exclusive wilderness, water safaris, the world's largest elephant herds | |
Walking safaris, South Luangwa & Victoria Falls | June – November | Returning safari travellers, walking safari devotees, raw unspoilt bush |
There is a reason Kenya has been drawing travellers since the days of Karen Blixen, and it has nothing to do with nostalgia. The Masai Mara remains, generation after generation, one of the finest game-viewing environments on earth, a landscape so teeming with wildlife that first-time visitors tend to go a little quiet in the vehicle, processing what they are seeing.
The Mara is only part of the story though. Amboseli sits in the shadow of Kilimanjaro and offers elephant viewing of an entirely different character, large, habituated herds moving in front of snow-capped peaks at distances close enough to make a wildlife photographer slightly delirious. The Laikipia Plateau has become one of Kenya's most exciting conservation frontiers: vast private ranches running alongside community conservancies, with excellent rhino populations and some of the best wild dog sightings in East Africa.
Add to all of this the extraordinary living culture of the Masai people, the chance to visit a village, to hear about a way of life that has adapted to modernity on its own terms rather than abandoned it, and Kenya becomes a holiday that works on levels a purely wildlife-focused trip cannot always reach.
Our Kenya Safari Holidays are built for those who want the quintessential African experience, and want it arranged by people who have spent real time there.
Tanzania rewards scale. Its major parks, the Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Ruaha, Selous (now Nyerere), Katavi, are enormous, and within them, the wildlife exists in concentrations that are simply unlike anywhere else. The Serengeti covers nearly 15,000 square kilometres of unfenced savannah. The Ngorongoro Crater is the world's largest intact volcanic caldera, and its floor supports one of the densest predator populations on the planet. When you drive down into it for the first time, it takes a moment to register what you are looking at.
And then there is the Migration. Over 1.5 million wildebeest and several hundred thousand zebras move in a perpetual circuit through the Serengeti ecosystem and into Kenya's Masai Mara, following the rains and the grass they bring. The river crossings, when the herds arrive at the Mara or Grumeti rivers and the collective instinct finally tips towards the plunge, are extraordinary to witness. Noisy, violent, chaotic and somehow deeply moving. The crocodiles waiting below are patient in the way only an animal with 200 million years of evolutionary practice can be.
Tanzania also has Zanzibar. White sand, warm Indian Ocean, excellent seafood, and the atmospheric Stone Town, a UNESCO-listed labyrinth of coral-stone streets and carved wooden doors. The combination of a week in the bush followed by four or five or more nights on the island is, for many of our clients, the holiday of their lives.
Explore our Tanzania Safari Holidays to find the itinerary that suits you.
South Africa is the most versatile safari destination in Africa, and possibly the most versatile holiday destination in the world. The range of what is available within a relatively compact geography is staggering, Big Five Game Reserves, world-class winelands, two coastlines, one of the most celebrated cities on earth, and a food and restaurant culture that has nothing to apologise for on any international stage.
The Kruger National Park and the Private Reserves running along its western border, Sabi Sands, Timbavati, Thornybush, Manyeleti, are among the finest Big Five destinations anywhere. Sabi Sands in particular has a long-established reputation for extraordinary leopard sightings; the animals are habituated to vehicles and go about their business with a nonchalance that allows genuinely close, prolonged observation.
What South Africa also offers, uniquely among major safari destinations, is an exceptional network of malaria-free Reserves. The Eastern Cape, Addo Elephant National Park, Shamwari, Kariega, Amakhala, and KwaZulu-Natal's Reserves offer superb wildlife encounters with no need for anti-malarial medication. For families travelling with young children, or for anyone who would prefer not to take prophylactics, this changes the calculus of destination choice considerably.
Our South Africa Safari Holidays cover everything from classic Big Five lodge stays in the Kruger belt to the Cape Winelands, the Garden Route, and self-drive itineraries through the Karoo.
Botswana took a decision that was either visionary or commercially reckless, depending on your perspective at the time: to position its tourism industry on the principle of low volume and high value, keeping visitor numbers minimal and the wilderness experience as close to unspoilt as possible. Decades later, it looks rather visionary.
The Okavango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Africa's Seven Natural Wonders, is the centrepiece. The Okavango River flows inland from Angola and fans out into the Kalahari Desert, creating a vast mosaic of channels, lagoons, islands and floodplains that covers an area roughly the size of Switzerland and supports an extraordinary density of wildlife. Game viewing here is not done exclusively from a 4x4. You go by motorboat along the main channels, by traditional mokoro dugout canoe through the shallow papyrus waterways, and on foot across the islands, a combination that produces an encounter with the African wilderness unlike anything a purely vehicle-based safari can offer.
Beyond the Delta, Chobe National Park holds the largest concentration of elephants in the world, herds of several hundred animals moving through the riverine woodland, swimming across the Chobe River, drinking at the bank at sunset. The Makgadikgadi Pans are one of the world's largest salt flats, stark, bleached, almost lunar in the dry season, and transformed into a wildlife corridor during the summer rains when enormous zebra migrations arrive.
Our Botswana Safari Holidays are designed for travellers who want the finest wilderness experience in Africa and understand that such things require investment.
There is something about Zambia that our team struggles to describe with complete accuracy, so we usually resort to anecdote. A consultant who joined us several years ago had been to Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Botswana. She came back from her first trip to the South Luangwa and said it was the first time she had felt genuinely in Africa rather than in a very well-managed African experience. That distinction matters to a certain kind of traveller.
Zambia is raw in the best possible sense. The South Luangwa National Park, where Norman Carr pioneered the walking safari in the 1950s, remains one of the least developed but most wildlife-rich parks in Africa. Walking here with an expert guide, moving slowly, following tracks, listening for alarm calls, understanding the wind direction, is a fundamentally different experience from a game drive. You notice different things. You feel differently in your body.
Several of our clients who have done it describe it as the most alive they have felt outdoors.
The park also has a serious claim to being the best leopard-sighting destination in Africa. And two hours' drive away, the Victoria Falls, a kilometre and a half of water dropping into the Batoka Gorge, provides a finale of appropriately dramatic proportions.
Browse our Zambia Safari Holidays and let us build an itinerary around what makes this country so singular.
The Big Five, lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros, Cape buffalo, takes its name from the big-game hunting era, when it referred to the five most dangerous and difficult animals to pursue on foot. The term has outlasted the context of its origin by a long stretch. Today it functions as a kind of orienting framework for the first-time safari traveller, a set of targets around which the excitement of a game drive can organise itself. And it serves that purpose well, there are few things in travel that compare to the first time you see a wild lion at close quarters, or watch a leopard move through a tree with particular fluidity.
But the Big Five is also a slight distortion of what a safari actually delivers. Africa's wildlife is so various, so continuously surprising, that reducing it to five animals risks underselling the experience considerably. An African wild dog pack in full pursuit, moving at 60 kilometres per hour across an open floodplain in coordinated, silent communication, that is extraordinary in a way that shares nothing with a tick-the-box exercise. A bull elephant moving alone through mopane woodland at dusk, pausing to listen, enormous and completely unhurried, that is its own separate thing entirely. And a Pel's fishing owl sitting motionless in a riverine fig tree in the Okavango, found after years of looking, means something to a birder that no Big Five sighting can replicate.
Africa is home to over 2,000 bird species. The lilac-breasted roller alone, turquoise, chestnut, cobalt, and magenta in a single bird, is worth a trip on its own terms. The Green Season from November to April is the high point of the birding calendar, when migratory species arrive from the northern hemisphere and resident birds come into full breeding plumage.
The standard-bearer. Permanent luxury lodges, set within private concessions or on the boundaries of National Parks, offer spacious suites with direct bush views, private plunge pools, fine dining served under the open sky in a boma firelit at night, and twice-daily game drives in open vehicles with a private guide. The best lodges in Botswana, the Sabi Sands, and the Serengeti represent some of the finest hospitality in the world, in settings no hotel in a city can come close to matching.
The seasonal camps of the Serengeti Migration circuit are the purest expression of what the safari originally was. Canvas and wood structures relocated according to the movements of the wildlife, they offer a romance that permanent lodges, for all their genuine luxury, cannot quite replicate. Starched white linen, Persian rugs on wooden decking, a campfire burning outside your tent at night while something large and unidentified moves in the darkness beyond it. This is how the safari imagination was formed, and these camps keep it alive with considerable flair.
If you have been on a vehicle safari before and want something that reconfigures your relationship with the bush entirely, a walking safari in Zambia is the obvious next step. Moving on foot through the Luangwa riverine forest, guided by someone who has spent twenty years reading the landscape, you understand the ecosystem differently. You hear it better. You notice smaller things. The experience of tracking an animal to within viewing distance, having understood from a set of prints in the sand an hour ago that it was heading this direction, produces a particular quality of satisfaction that a game drive, for all its pleasures, simply cannot.
Botswana's Okavango Delta demands to be experienced on the water. Drifting through narrow papyrus channels in a traditional mokoro dugout canoe, propelled by a pole in near-total silence, you reach parts of the Delta that no vehicle can access and encounter wildlife in a state of complete ease. Elephants swimming between islands with only the crowns of their heads and the curves of their tusks visible above the waterline is one of those images that tends to settle permanently into memory.
Some of Africa's finest wilderness areas are simply not accessible by road without spending days getting there. Fly-in itineraries use light aircraft, small, low-flying, with views that are themselves a significant part of the experience, to connect camps across vast distances. The Okavango Delta seen from 1,500 feet is a different thing from the Delta seen at ground level: a labyrinth of silver channels and dark-green islands spreading to every horizon. Worth knowing: most light aircraft operating in Africa hold to a 20kg soft-bag limit, which is not a suggestion.
There is no single correct answer, and anyone who gives you one without asking which destination you have in mind is simplifying in a way that may not serve you well.
The Dry Season (June to October) delivers the best game viewing conditions across most of Sub-Saharan Africa. When the rains stop, the vegetation opens up, the grass drops, and animals converge on the remaining water sources in predictable locations. A waterhole at midday in Botswana during August can be extraordinary, elephants, lions, zebra and giraffes all negotiating space around the same muddy bank. The light in the dry season is particular too: dusty, golden in the late afternoon, with a quality that photographers chase across the continent.
Peak season means that the best camps book out far in advance. For the most sought-after properties, particularly in the Serengeti during Migration season or in the Okavango Delta in high season, six months' notice is reasonable, and twelve months is not excessive for the most popular windows.
The Green Season (November to April) tends to be underestimated by first-time safari travellers, which benefits those who know better. After the first rains, the landscape transforms: the dust disappears, the grass comes through vivid and green, wildflowers appear along the drainage lines, and the birdlife arrives in numbers. This is also the season of newborn animals, impala lambs everywhere, lion cubs beginning to emerge from dens, elephant calves still wobbly in the legs attempting to keep up with their mothers. Lodge rates are substantially lower during this period.
For the Great Migration specifically, the timing is everything:
Planning a safari is genuinely complex in a way that planning most other holidays is not. The right camp at the wrong time of year is a wasted opportunity. The wrong guide, even in the right location, can reduce an extraordinary landscape to a competent but forgettable day out. Light aircraft schedules, private concession access, the specific knowledge of which lodges have been slipping and which have recently improved, these details matter enormously, and they are not available on any booking engine.
We have been working with Africa since 1992. Our team travels to the continent multiple times a year, staying in the properties we recommend, driving the roads, walking the concessions, and maintaining the personal relationships that allow us to be honest with you about what is currently worth your money and what is not. When one of our consultants tells you that a particular lodge in the Kafue has the finest leopard guiding in Zambia, it is because they were sitting on that lodge's deck watching a leopard last season.
We build every itinerary from scratch. There is no shelf, no package, no pre-assembled ten-day itinerary that we adapt for each enquiry. The conversation begins with you, who you are, how you travel, what you want to feel, and what your previous holidays have and have not delivered. The itinerary that comes back reflects that conversation.
Our longstanding relationships with lodge owners, airlines and conservation partners across the continent allow us to access rates and availability that simply do not exist through online channels. Our best-price guarantee is a direct consequence of those relationships, not a marketing position.
Every flight-inclusive holiday we sell is fully protected under the ATOL scheme (No. 3384). Your money is safe from the moment you pay it.
And through the entire process, from first call to the day you land home, you have a dedicated consultant who knows your itinerary in detail and is reachable if anything needs attention. Africa is magnificent. It is also occasionally unpredictable. That is part of its character, and it is precisely why having an expert in your corner matters.
Call our team on 020 7843 3500 (UK) or +1 888 228 3417 (US), or submit an enquiry to begin the conversation.
Costs vary substantially depending on destination, lodge standard, time of year and duration. As a working guide: a carefully constructed, quality safari, good camps, private guiding, credible lodge standards, starts from around £3,500 per person for a week in the shoulder season. At the upper end, the most exclusive fly-in camps in Botswana or the finest properties in the Serengeti command between £15,000 and £20,000 per person for a week-long stay, and in some cases significantly more. The range is wide, and our role is to be honest with you about where the genuine value sits within your budget, because it is not always where you might expect it.
It is, with the right planning. The destination that works best for families with younger children is South Africa, for a specific reason: its finest Game Reserves, Addo Elephant National Park, Shamwari, Kariega, Madikwe, are entirely malaria-free, which means no anti-malarial medication is required for children. Many lodges across South Africa and Kenya offer children's programmes, junior ranger activities, and family suites with separate sleeping areas. A practical note: Botswana's most exclusive fly-in camps impose minimum age restrictions, commonly 12 or 16 years, and we factor this in from the outset rather than discovering it late in the planning process.
Lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros, and Cape buffalo, originally the five most dangerous animals to pursue on a big-game hunt, now the quintessential photographic safari ambition. For all five in the highest concentrations, South Africa's Sabi Sands Game Reserve (bordering the Kruger) is the leading destination, with particularly celebrated leopard sightings. Kenya's Masai Mara and Tanzania's Serengeti are exceptional for lions and elephants. Chobe National Park in Botswana holds the world's largest elephant population. For rhino, the Eastern Cape Reserves and Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy, which protects the last two northern white rhinos on earth, carry the greatest significance.
Neutral colours and layers. Mornings in the open vehicle before sunrise can be very cold, temperatures in the Okavango Delta or the Luangwa Valley in July drop to single figures before dawn, regardless of what the afternoon will bring. A warm fleece or a light down jacket is not optional. Cotton shirts and trousers in khaki, sand, olive or brown work across all occasions; avoid white and bright colours, which both disturb wildlife and show every particle of red dust. A good wide-brimmed hat, high-factor sun protection, DEET-based insect repellent, quality binoculars (8x42 is the standard recommendation), and a camera with a decent zoom lens will cover the essentials. If your itinerary involves light aircraft transfers between camps, as most Botswana and many Zambia itineraries do, the baggage allowance is typically 20kg in a soft, squashable bag. Not a hard suitcase. It will not fit.
Our complete guide: What to wear on Safari
Four nights is the practical minimum if you want to properly inhabit the experience rather than rush through it. Six to eight nights across two camps is the format that tends to produce the most satisfying results for most travellers, enough time to see a genuine variety of wildlife and conditions, without the slight repetition that can occasionally set in after ten nights in a single location. The most popular pattern among our clients is eight to twelve days total, combining two or three camps, often with a beach extension in Zanzibar, the Seychelles, Mozambique or Mauritius to decompress at the end.
The Migration is a continuous, year-round phenomenon, the wildebeest are always moving, but the most dramatic moments follow a seasonal calendar. The Mara River crossings in Kenya's Masai Mara and the northern Serengeti happen primarily from July to October: vast columns of wildebeest piling into crocodile-filled water in a frenzy of noise and chaos. From January to March, the herds are on the short-grass plains of the southern Serengeti and the Ndutu area of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area for the calving season, 400,000 calves born within a few weeks, which attracts an extraordinary density of predators. From April to June, the migration moves north through the western Serengeti corridor, crossing the Grumeti River. Less visited than the Mara crossings, and well worth considering for that reason alone. We plan Migration itineraries months in advance and position our clients carefully, being in the right general area is not enough.
Most of East Africa, Kenya and Tanzania, and most of Southern Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, falls within a malaria-risk zone, and prophylactic medication is strongly recommended for any trip to these areas. We advise speaking to your GP or a specialist travel health clinic at least six weeks before departure, since the appropriate medication varies with the individual and the itinerary. For those who prefer not to take anti-malarials, South Africa offers genuine alternatives: the Eastern Cape Reserves, the Waterberg, and Madikwe Game Reserve are all malaria-free and offer excellent wildlife without any compromise on quality.
Tipping is a meaningful part of the safari economy across Africa and forms a significant supplement to the income of guides, trackers and lodge staff. It is always discretionary, but it is expected and, where service has been excellent, warmly appreciated. As a practical guide: US$10–$20 per person per day for your guide or tracker is the accepted range, and US$5–$10 per person per day for general lodge staff, placed in a communal tip box at the end of your stay. US Dollars are the preferred currency in most East African destinations; South African Rand is appropriate in South Africa. Your Africa Travel consultant will provide specific guidance on tipping norms for your particular camps and destinations as part of your pre-departure documentation.
Ready to start planning? Call us on 020 7843 3500 (UK) or +1 888 228 3417 (US), or send us an enquiry and we will come back to you to begin building your itinerary.
All flight-inclusive holidays are fully ATOL-protected. ATOL No. 3384.
Sales Director & Conde Nast Traveler Top Travel Specialist
Chris joined Africa Travel directly from university in 1992 and knows both the company and Africa extremely well.
Read moreSales Supervisor, London
Julia’s love for travel began at a young age. Born in Cape Town, she spent many a holiday exploring Southern Africa with her family before starting her career in travel.
Read moreSales Advisor, London
Felicity, who joined Africa Travel in 2004, has worked in the travel industry for over 30 years and originally comes from South Africa's KwaZulu Natal province
Read moreManager, Cape Town
Christine fell in love with Africa over 30 years ago, and has been managing the Cape Town office since 2008, and is looking forward to exploring Namibia more.
Read moreSales Support, Cape Town
Shaun joined the travel industry just over 10 years ago, working first for an online travel booking portal and an ecotourism company, specialising in sustainable travel in Southern and East Africa.
Read moreSales Support, Cape Town
Debbie joined Africa Travel in May 2009 and has been in the travel industry for over 20 years, enjoying a number of roles, from airline ticketing to accounting.
Read moreTour Guide, Cape Town
Christine first came to Africa as a young woman and immediately felt a connection which has never allowed her to leave. She lived in Johannesburg and in Knysna on the Garden Route, but came to Cape Town 22 years ago and realised it was where she wanted to be!
Read moreTour Guide, Cape Town
Alyson grew up in Zimbabwe and it was her parents who influenced her a great love of the African bush. It was not just a love of the wildlife but the plant and bird life and everything that is associated in the wild spaces of Africa.
Read moreAfrica Travel is the UK's premier specialist dealing with travel to Africa, but we aren't just a website or a call centre, we are a boutique, owner-run company with personal connections to many of the owners of the properties we feature.
Our long-standing and leading position in the travel industry allows us to negotiate the very best hotel rates & airfares, and to offer a best-price guarantee on any like-for-like itinerary.
All flights and flight-inclusive holidays on this website are financially protected by the ATOL scheme. Our ATOL number is 3384 www.atol.org.uk/ATOLCertificate
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