A first safari is often planned backwards. A lodge catches the eye, and only later does it emerge that it sits in a landscape nobody had pictured, in a month when the animals have moved on. It is better to begin with the country. Each of the six classic safari destinations offers a genuinely different experience: different terrain, different ways of moving through it, and different ideas about how many visitors a wild place should hold.
Six countries, six kinds of safari
Kenya and Tanzania share the East African savannah: open grassland, enormous skies and the wildebeest and zebra migration that circles between Tanzania's Serengeti and Kenya's Maasai Mara through the year. This is the classic picture, and a great deal can be seen from a vehicle. In Kenya, the private conservancies bordering the Mara reserve have changed the experience. Mara Plains Camp has just seven tents in the Olare Motorogi Conservancy, land leased from Maasai owners, so a sighting seldom has to be shared with another vehicle. In Tanzania, Singita Sasakwa Lodge commands a private concession of some 350,000 acres on the Serengeti's western corridor, which the herds typically pass through between roughly May and July.
Botswana is about water and space. Each year the Okavango Delta floods with rain that fell months earlier in the Angolan highlands, turning dry plains into a maze of channels and islands, and the country's preference for few visitors at high prices shows in both the quiet and the bill. andBeyond Sandibe Okavango Safari Lodge has its own concession beside Moremi and Chief's Island, where big elephant herds, buffalo, lion and leopard are all resident. South-east of the Delta, Jack's Camp faces the Makgadikgadi salt pans, where the activities are meerkats, quad bikes on the pan crust and walks with Bushmen guides: a very different Botswana.
South Africa is the easiest introduction. Logistics are straightforward, lodges are polished, and the private reserves of the Greater Kruger share an unfenced boundary with the national park. Singita Ebony Lodge, on the Sand River in the Sabi Sand, is in some of the most dependable leopard country in Africa. Families often prefer malaria-free reserves such as Madikwe, where Jamala Madikwe Royal Safari Lodge has just five villas, the Big Five and a monitored population of wild dog, about four hours' drive from Johannesburg.
Zambia is for those who want to walk. South Luangwa is widely credited with inventing the walking safari, and at Time + Tide Chinzombo, across the river from the park, mornings often start on foot. The valley is also famous for its leopard, which occur here in unusually high numbers.
Zimbabwe pairs naturally with Victoria Falls. Hwange is known for the elephant that gather at its waterholes as the land dries, and Wilderness Linkwasha Camp, on a private concession near the Ngamo Plains, is under an hour's flight from the falls.
When to go, and the case for the green season
In southern Africa the dry winter, roughly May to October, is peak season. The bush thins, water becomes scarce and animals concentrate around what remains, which makes them easier to find. Dawn drives can be properly cold. The green season, roughly November to April, brings afternoon storms, lush landscapes, newborn animals and migrant birds, along with fewer vehicles and lower rates. Some places are at their best then: the Makgadikgadi grasslands draw large numbers of zebra and wildebeest in the wet months. The catch is that some camps close, particularly in Zambia; Chinzombo is unusual in staying open year round.
East Africa has two rainy seasons, the long rains around April and May and shorter rains around November. The migration follows the rain rather than the calendar: calving in the southern Serengeti early in the year, the western corridor around mid-year, and the Mara River crossings from roughly July to October. Timings shift from one year to the next, so treat any month as a probability rather than a promise.
