Africa
There are well over a hundred quality safari areas in Africa, contained within around a dozen countries. Each location has its own unique climate, landscapes, wildlife and safari styles. This page is intended to be your starting point for choosing exactly the right location for your next safari.
South Africa
South Africa is a vast and incredibly diverse country, with far more highlights than could ever be included in a single trip. Most people start with a combination of safari in Kruger and time in Cape Town and the Winelands, but there are many other locations and over 900 good quality lodges.
Asia
There are literally hundreds of high quality locations in the Indian Subcontinent for travel and safari, contained within five countries. Each location has its own unique climate, landscapes, wildlife and safari styles. This page is intended to be your starting point for choosing exactly the right locations for your next trip.
Tanzania
Tanzania is a truly remarkable country, with far more than its fair share of Africa’s crowned jewels, including Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar, with guest accommodation in around 350 good quality lodges, offering a very wide range of safari, cultural and marine activities.
Americas
We cover over fifty quality locations in the Americas for travel and safari, contained within several countries. Each location has its own unique climate, landscapes, wildlife and safari styles. This page is intended to be your starting point for choosing exactly the right location for your next trip.
Kenya
Set in East Africa, Kenya is the second most visited safari country on the continent, a place of great diversity, with some wonderful remote locations, but very busy and touristy in core areas. Guest accommodation is in a diverse range of around 120 good quality camps and lodges, offering a very wide range of safari, active, marine and cultural activities.
Namibia
Namibia is a fabulously diverse and fascinating country which offers a remarkable range of desert scenery, wildlife and culture. The naturally lower wildlife densities mean that it is perhaps best suited to more experienced or less animal-focused safari travellers. The option to self-drive makes longer trips unusually cost effective.
India
From the Himalayas in the north, through the deserts of Rajasthan and the jungles of Madyha Pradesh, down to the tropical coastline of the Indian Ocean, India is a hugely diverse place. It is also a country overflowing with incredible historic sites, cultural experiences and wonderful wildlife. Easy to see why people rarely visit this remarkable country only once.
Botswana
Botswana is widely considered to be the finest safari area in Africa, offering the purest and most pristine of wilderness experiences, with guest accommodation in a fabulous range of around 100 very high quality and famously pricey lodges, offering a very wide range of wet and dry safari activities.
Kruger
Set in the northeast of South Africa, Kruger is a vast conservation area, the most popular safari destination on the continent, renowned for easy wildlife viewing and great predator photography. Guest accommodation is in around 150 lodges, most of which are extremely comfortable and reliable, as well as covering an unusually wide range of price levels.
Serengeti
Serengeti is the mother of all safari reserves, a most extraordinary place, best known for its enormous wildebeest and zebra migration, but with prolific wildlife year round. Guest accommodation is in a fabulous range of over 100 camps and lodges, offering a range of safari and cultural activities.
Sri Lanka
Set in the Indian ocean just to the southeast of India, Sri Lanka is a substantial tropical island with remarkable ancient Buddhist sites, extensive colonial history, a surprising amount of good quality safari areas, excellent marine sports and a remarkable range of high quality accommodation options.
Zambia
Zambia is a substantial land-locked country in Southern Africa, best known for the Victoria Falls, but also with a handful of superb remote safari areas. Guest accommodation is in a range of around 100 largely authentic and earthy camps and lodges, many with a marked leaning towards walking safari.
Zanzibar
Set off the coast of Tanzania, Zanzibar Island is a fabulously beautiful and extremely historic place with glorious white sand beaches, coral lagoons and excellent diving. Guest accommodation is in around 120 decent lodges, hotels and resorts, offering a wide range of marine and cultural activities.
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a substantial land-locked country in Southern Africa, best known for the Victoria Falls, but also offering some of the most earthy, authentic heart-pumping safari on the continent, with guest accommodation in a range of around 50 good quality camps and lodges.
Argentina
The second largest country in South America, Argentina is dominated by relatively featureless flat grasslands, but fringed by an incredible array of remarkable landscapes, from bucolic winelands, to extreme high altitude deserts and the great ice-sheets and glaciers of the deep south. The country is easy to get around and offers a fabulous range of places to stay.
Maasai Mara
Set 200 km west of Nairobi, Maasai Mara is the portion of the Serengeti ecosystem that lies on the Kenya side of the border with Tanzania. It contains lovely scenery and very rich wildlife, but with serious traffic issues in the public access areas. Guest accommodation is in around 75 lodges.
Peru
Set on the west coast of South America, Peru is a remarkably diverse country, dominated by the Andes Mountains and their remarkable Inca history, but also containing some of the most interesting parts of the Amazon Basin. Travel infrastructure is well established in the more popular areas, but there are also lots of fabulous lesser-known places to explore.
Nepal
Set in the Himalayas to the north of India, Nepal is an extremely mountainous country, best known for its exceptional trekking routes around Everest and Annapurna, centred on the characterful capital of Kathmandu and with a string of tiger safari reserves on its southern borders.
Okavango
Set in the heart of the Kalahari Desert in northern Botswana, Okavango Delta is a stunningly beautiful and vibrant wetland, with intensely rich and varied wildlife, offering a very wide range of wet and dry safari activities. Guest accommodation is in around 65 very high quality and famously pricey lodges.
Brazil
The largest country in South America, Brazil is a vast tropical land, dominated by the Amazon Basin and a seemingly endless tropical coastline. The two most popular areas are the iconic Rio de Janeiro and the fabulous Iguacu Falls, whilst the best area for wildlife is the Pantanal.
Chile
Set on the west coast of South America, Chile is an extremely long and skinny country which contains an incredible range of climates and landscapes from searing deserts to enormous glaciers. It’s a very friendly country, with excellent travel infrastructure and some great lodges. Also the best puma viewing in the Americas.
Uganda
Uganda is a land-locked country in east-central Africa, best known for its gorillas and chimpanzees, but also containing some superb Rift Valley scenery and savanna safari reserves. Guest accommodation is in a total of only around 30 decent lodges and camps, offering a really wide range of safari, active and cultural activities.
Cape Town
Set in the Western Cape of South Africa, Cape Town is a fabulous, fascinating city, tucked in the folds of a very beautiful national park, where you are never short of a view and never more than a short walk away from an epic hiking trail. There’s so much to see and do that a few nights will only enable you to scratch the surface.
Madagascar
Set in the Indian Ocean to the east of Africa, Madagascar is a huge and remarkable island with a unique flora and fauna, from the tropical rainforests of the east to the spiny forests and tsingys of the west, all encircled by fabulous coral reefs. A truly amazing place to explore.
Bhutan
Set in the Himalayas to the northeast of India, Bhutan is a remote mountainous country, best known for its deeply-ingrained Buddhist culture, historic monasteries, colourful festivals, warm welcoming people, wonderful and diverse scenery, a wide range of outdoor activities and a surprisingly broad range of accommodation, including some really high quality lodges.
Mozambique
Mozambique is a vast and hugely under-developed country, largely visited for its fabulous and remote tropical coastline, home to around a dozen high quality lodges, which can be reached by air from Johannesburg.
South Luangwa
Set in eastern Zambia, some 850 km northeast of Victoria Falls, South Luangwa is one of the finest safari areas in Africa, with very rich wildlife and some particularly strong walking safari. Guest accommodation is in around 40 mostly small and earthy safari camps and lodges.
Egypt
Egypt is way better than most people could imagine. Obviously, the archaeology is incredible, but it’s not the whole deal. The Nile River is hyper-relaxing, the deserts are hypnotising and the underwater world of the Red Sea is incredible. Egyptians are wonderfully warm and relaxed, when not behind the wheel. We do have to work quite hard to avoid the crowds in some locations, but it can definitely be done.
Ecuador
Set in the northwest of South America, Ecuador is a small but ridiculously diverse country, centred on the gorgeous high valleys of the Andes Mountains, flanked either side by the Amazon Basin and the tropical Pacific coastline, to combine with the fabulous islands of Galapagos.
Seychelles
Very remotely located in the Indian Ocean, the Seychelles is a group of beautiful tropical islands, renowned for their awesome granite-bouldered beaches and superb marine life. Guest accommodation is in a decent collection of high quality lodges and resorts, the best of which are on private islands, offering a broad range of active, sports and marine activities.
Ethiopia
Set in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia is an extremely diverse country, with a truly remarkable history, incredible volcanic landscapes, a wealth of diverse wilderness areas and some amazing tribal cultures. But visitor infrastructure is thin on the ground, with fewer than a dozen high quality lodges.
Sabi Sand Reserve
Set in the northeast of South Africa, Sabi Sand is the premium private safari reserve to the west of Kruger National Park, with extremely rich and accessible wildlife and containing the lion’s share of the region’s high quality lodges.
Mauritius
Set way out in the Indian Ocean, Mauritius is a very remote and beautiful tropical island, with a verdant mountain interior, fabulous white sand beaches and rich coral marine life. The island is mainly focused on large luxury beach hotels and golf resorts, which are occasionally combined with safari in South Africa.
Serengeti Mara
Serengeti Mara is the prime but potentially busy area for migration herds and river crossings during the Jul-Nov dry season and a wonderful quiet backwater at other times, with guest accommodation in around 30 small lodges and camps, offering a good range of safari experiences.
Everest
Set in the east of Nepal, the Everest Range is the most popular trekking area in the country, with a good range of comfortable hotels at every stop and a selection of trekking routes that varies from six to seventeen nights, some including the renowned Everest Base Camp.
Maldives
Set in the Indian Ocean, around 600 km southwest of the tip of India, the Maldives is a vast collection of gorgeous coral atolls, home to around 150 resorts, some of which are amongst the very best in the world.
Malawi
Encircled by Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, Malawi is a beautiful and very authentic little country, a quiet backwater renowned for its beautiful lake and beaches, as well as some interesting safari areas. Guest accommodation is in fewer than 30 good quality camps and lodges, offering a wide range of safari and marine activities.
Serengeti Central
Serengeti Central is the heart of this remarkable reserve, with guest accommodation in around 25 camps and lodges, offering prodigious wildlife viewing year round, but with serious potential for traffic problems in core areas.
Serengeti Southwest
Serengeti Southwest is the main area for migration action during the key Dec-Apr calving season and a peaceful backwater at other times, with guest accommodation in around 30 small lodges and camps, offering a good range of safari experiences. Traffic issues in peak migration months.
Ngorongoro
Situated immediately to the south of Serengeti, the Ngorongoro Highlands is a range of dramatic volcanic peaks which is traversed during private-guided overland safaris through the region, notably passing through the famous Ngorongoro Crater.
Hwange
Set just 130 km south of Victoria Falls, Hwange is the most popular wildlife reserve in Zimbabwe, renowned for the quality of its safari guiding, rich and varied wildlife, authentic walking safari and superb hides, with guest accommodation in around 25 largely earthy and authentic lodges and camps.
Rwanda
Surrounded by Tanzania, Burundi, DRC and Uganda, Rwanda is a highly populous little country best known for its mountain scenery, tropical forests, mountain gorillas, chimpanzees and cultural interaction, plus some modest savanna safari. Guest accommodation is in only around a dozen decent quality lodges.
Etosha
Etosha National Park is the best known wildlife area in Namibia, renowned for intense animal scenes around its many waterholes. Unfortunately the national park itself is primarily set up for self-drive and core areas are often unpleasantly busy. A network of private reserves around the periphery do their best to inject some quality into the experience.
Galapagos
Set on the equator, 1000 km (600 miles) off the coast of Ecuador, Galapagos is a remarkable group of young volcanic islands, renowned for their unique flora and fauna, as well as being the inspiration for Charles Darwin’s discovery of evolution.
Waterberg Mountains
Set in the north of South Africa, the non-malarial Waterberg Mountains area contains several interesting wildlife reserves, with some superb scenery and relatively easy wildlife viewing, as well as options for horse-riding and golf. Guest accommodation is in around 25 decent quality lodges, many of which are relatively well priced.
Los Glaciares
Set in the south of Argentina, Los Glaciares is a substantial national park which contains dramatic mountain peaks, vast glaciers and stunning lakes. There’s a wide selection of outdoor activities, including some great hiking and horseback riding, plus some wonderfully remote and authentic estancias.
Victoria Falls Town
Set in the northwest corner of Zimbabwe, across the river from Zambia, Victoria Falls is one of the most alluring locations in Africa, surprisingly pleasant and undeveloped, with guest accommodation in around 20 diverse hotels and lodges, offering a very wide range of safari, cultural and adrenaline-based activities.
Franschhoek
Set in the heart of the Cape Winelands, Franschhoek is a beautiful and relaxed village and a very popular place for our guests to stay, with a wealth of high class wineries, restaurants and hotels, plus options for shopping, mountain hiking and biking.
Madikwe
Set in the north of South Africa, Madikwe is one of the best non-malarial safari reserves in Africa. At 750 square kilometres it’s around 4% the size of Kruger, a fully-fenced area which was once farmland, but is now rehabilitated and restocked with a full range of wildlife. Guest accommodation is in around 20 lodges, some of which are unusually well priced.
