Booking your first safari

How can I see one of these...?

When I was young, it was a dream of mine to go on safari in Africa, but I thought it would be such a special trip that I saved it for my honeymoon - which never arrived!

In the end, I received an email from a friend inviting me to climb Mount Kenya and go on safari. I jumped at the chance, and that was how my career as a wildlife photographer got started.

If you've never been on safari but are thinking about booking something, here's the bluffer's guide. You'll obviously need to do a bit of research online yourself, just to find out where the best places are and how much you're likely to have to spend, but this is my advice.

Countries

The website Safari Bookings thinks the top four safari destinations are Tanzania, Botswana, Zambia and Kenya, but here's my quick summary of all the African countries I’ve visited:

• Botswana is expensive, but I’ve been lucky enough to visit several times in the last few years. It's good for the amount of wildlife and the almost constant presence of water, which makes a great backdrop, offers the chance of boat trips and means the animals are always interacting with it, either drinking or taking mud baths or play-fighting or just crossing the Chobe River.
  However, you need to go to the right parts, and that means the Okavango Delta, Moremi Game Reserve and Chobe National Park (which includes Savuti).

• Kenya was the first African country I ever visited, so I'm very fond of it.

  • The Masai Mara is the place to go in Kenya. That's where you can get those classic shots of the wildebeest crossing the Mara or Grumeti River, hesitant at first and then all tumbling over themselves to jump down the cliffs and into the water. You can also see the Big Five and plenty of other species of safari animals, including the cheetah, hippo and giraffe. I’m not really a fan of the ‘typical’ African landscape you find in the Masai Mara. I like the endless plains and the iconic acacia trees, but the elephants usually leave too many dead and dying trees behind them. However, you do get a few nice spots, usually the ones with hills, cliffs and rivers. My favourite is Leopard Gorge, which featured in the BBC series Big Cat Diary. There aren’t any leopards any more, sadly, only baboons, but it’s still a pretty little ravine with rocks and trees on either side.

  • Kicheche Camps are found in a few of the private conservancies bordering the Masai Mara, and they’re great places for cheetah hunts. I’ve seen at least one cheetah kill every time I’ve stayed there, and on my first trip, I saw five in a week!

• Namibia offers the prospect of rare desert-adapted lions and elephants and plenty of black and white rhinos in Etosha National Park. In fact, I saw so many rhinos there (17 in one weekend!) that we eventually just drove past them without even stopping!

• South Africa was the last of the major safari destinations I visited—and that happened quite serendipitously when my flight home from Botswana in 2024 was cancelled! I found myself in Jo’burg, which was only a four-hour drive away from Kruger National Park, and I managed to book a last-minute safari.

  • Kruger National Park is the most famous safari destination in South Africa. You can see the Big Five, giraffes, hippos and various antelope species, plus all the different birds (although I didn’t see very many). In addition, The roads are often tarred and at least surfaced with gravel, which is very unusual in Africa, and there are even cafés where you can stop for lunch. However, it does get busy. That means you might have to put up with a few traffic jams. As soon as there’s a sighting, the guides share the news on a WhatsApp group, so dozens of safari trucks and self-drive vehicles descend on the location.

  • The Greater Kruger refers to the private conservancies that surround Kruger National Park, such as Sabi Sand, and it’s probably the better option. Unlike in the park, you can drive offroad, and there are far fewer vehicles. However, I soon realised that you have to value quality over quantity. There are so many trees that it’s hard to find the animals—even with a tracker sitting on the front of the truck. Yes, you will see lions, leopards and wild dogs, but you won’t get many sightings. On my last game drive, I only saw one lion and a lilac-breasted roller in two hours!

• Tanzania offers the classic destinations of the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater, plus others such as Lake Manyara and Tarangire (all of which I visited).
  It's unusual in that you can go pretty much all year round as long as you avoid the short and long rains.

  • The Serengeti has endless plains where you can easily see the game, and the amount of wildlife is generally good, particularly during the Great Migration, which takes thousands of wildebeest and zebra in an enormous clockwise circle through Tanzania and Kenya and continues throughout the year. In fact, you can see the Mara River crossing just as well from Tanzania as you can from Kenya. When I went in August 2023, I was lucky enough to see a crossing every single morning! I also spent three months at Klein’s Camp in 2019. The wildlife sightings weren’t very frequent, but there was a magnificent view up the valley through the picture windows in the main rondavel.

  • The Ngorongoro Crater offers a great variety of wildlife and great views from the rim of the caldera, but there's one small caveat, which is that you won't see any giraffes - their legs are too long for them to climb up and down the mountain!

  • Lake Manyara and Tarangire are more picturesque, and the views over the Tarangire River are spectacular. However, the added trees and hills make the game less easy to spot, and the bar at Tarangire Safari Lodge is infested with insects!

• Zambia is famous for South Luangwa National Park, but I had a fairly disappointing first experience in the summer of 2024. I only had a few wild dog sightings, and I only saw one leopard in two weeks! There are so many trees that it’s hard to spot the wildlife, and I went on one game drive when we didn’t see a single animal and another when I didn’t take a single photograph!

• Zimbabwe was similar to Zambia and South Africa in terms of the number of trees and the lack of good sightings. Mana Pools is great for walking safaris as the big cats are habituated to humans, which means you can get up close and personal—even if it’s a growling male lion! There are also half a dozen male elephants that are famous for getting up on their hind legs to browse bushes and trees. At sunset, that can offer a classic photographic moment.
  However, you see far more elephants than anything else, and there are quite a few species you don’t see at all, such as rhinos and cheetahs. In fact, I had so few sightings that I spent most of my second week there photographing birds at Long Pool…

Cost

The cost of your trip will depend mostly on the time of year, type of accommodation, number of people and duration. To give you an idea of the range of prices, I spent two weeks in Botswana on a private mobile safari that cost me over £6,000, but I also stayed in Tanzania for 10 days on an Exodus group safari for £3,499.

• Time of year
  Peak season is generally July to October, although it gets very hot in September and October (over 40°C), so you can get a cheaper option in the 'shoulder season', but the downside is that you see less wildlife, as water is more plentiful, which means they don't gather in numbers around the water sources.

• Type of accommodation
  If you want to travel in style, you can stay at lodges, usually outside the gates of the national parks. However, if you're happy to put up with tents, that will save you a lot of money.
  
  There are two kinds of tent: the first is the one you'll find in what they call 'permanent tented camps', and it's more like a cabin, with a tent at the front, but with a proper bed and a bathroom with toilet and shower built at the back. (That's what I had in Tanzania recently.)
  
  The other kind is just a two-man tent that the staff will usually put up for you, although you may have to do it yourself. If you pay a 'single supplement', you don't have to share with anyone, but it'll normally cost you an extra £300-400.

• Number of people
  I went on a private mobile safari to Botswana in 2016. It was great for my purposes as a photographer, but most people would probably enjoy a group trip more, and it would be a lot cheaper!
  
  My Tanzania trip with Exodus was around £3,500, but I was lucky in that I booked it late, so I didn't have to share with anyone even though I hadn't paid the single supplement!
  
  You obviously take a risk by going with people you don't know, and there are usually one or two that you end up trying to avoid (!), but you shouldn't go too far wrong with operators like Exodus, and all the guests will obviously share an interest in Nature, wildlife and usually photography.

• Duration
  There are safaris available from just a long weekend to a couple of months, but I'd suggest around a week or 10 days to begin with. That gives you the chance to go to different destinations within a country and maximise your chances of good wildlife sightings.
  
  Obviously, the longer the trip, the more expensive it is, but there are still a few bargains to be had if you're not fussy about the accommodation.

Operators

Once you've decided exactly what type of safari you're looking for, you're ready to go ahead and book, A useful place to start is Safari Bookings, which is a website where you can filter all the available tours by country, region, price and duration, so it's incredibly useful. On the other hand, some of the tours turn out to be unavailable once you contact the operator, so it's not perfect!

I've been on photographic trips with Exodus, Audley Travel, Naturetrek, WorldwideXplorer and G Adventures, and I hear that Explore is another good option. They're all pretty similar, although G Adventures has a younger age profile than Exodus, and Audley Travel offers (much!) more expensive bespoke trips.

I should mention here that I also teach photography and lead tour parties to Africa myself. From March to June 2019, I’ll be teaching photography at three different safari lodges in Tanzania and Kenya, and I'm also leading a trip to Botswana and Victoria Falls in August 2019 to see the lunar rainbow.

You can find full details on the Events page. My trips are geared towards wildlife photographers, but that doesn't mean you need to be a budding professional to enjoy the trip!

If you'd like to have a chat about my photographic trips or just safaris in general, please feel free to drop me a line at nick@nickdalephotography.com or call me on +44 7942 800921.

If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.

If you’d like to book a lesson or order an online photography course, please visit my Lessons and Courses pages.