A safari will always be extraordinary, but the difference between good and great often comes down to space – for both the you and the wildlifeA safari will always be extraordinary, but the difference between good and great often comes down to space – for both the you and the wildlife
For most people, a safari is the ultimate once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s extraordinary in ways that are difficult to imagine until you’re there. But it’s also a serious investment, both financially and in terms of time – getting there is rarely quick, and the planning alone can be considerable. So after all that, the last thing you want is to be disappointed. In my opinion, there’s one factor that can make or break your safari experience: crowds.
For years, I dreamed of visiting Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve, one of Africa’s most legendary safari spots. While I was tempted (and would still love) to visit during the famous Great Migration, I deliberately travelled in the off-season to avoid shattering my long-imagined idyll. And yet, I still didn’t escape the crowds.
On my very first game drive in the Mara, I witnessed my first kill: a cheetah slinked through swishy blonde grass and suddenly sped off with the vigour of an F1 racer. She vanished, magician-like, into a puff of savannah dust, only to reappear moments later with a Thomson’s gazelle in her clenched jaws. It was extraordinary, but far from intimate. At least 10 vehicles had converged around the scene, encircling the out-of-breath animal, gazelle draped rag-doll-like in her mouth. Cars creeping ever closer, Nancy, my local Maasai safari guide from Great Plain’s Mara Toto Tree Camp, reprimanded them under her breath for getting so close. After a few minutes of watching the crowd build, it just didn’t feel right to stay.
“Let’s go,” I told Nancy, and she understood, nodding silently. “That’s not even that bad,” she told me on our drive back to camp. “During the Great Migration, the number of vehicles can be 10 times that.”
Thankfully, the following day Nancy had a solution. Instead of staying in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, where my camp was based, she drove me into the neighbouring Mara North Conservancy, a privatised area neighbouring the Reserve. While it was still part of the same Mara ecosystem, there was one major difference: it was open to only a very small fraction of visitors – which luckily includes guests of Mara Toto Tree Camp. The contrast on that day couldn’t have been more striking: instead of one big cat and 10 cars, it was 10 big cats (this time lions) to one car (mine). And that was just the beginning.
Protecting the environment and wildlife is becoming increasingly critical in the safari space, and conservancies are at the forefront of this effort. “With over-crowding in the parks, and with the parks also under pressure from livestock, much of the conservation of these ecosystems falls to the surrounding private conservancies that protect the flanks of the parks themselves,” says Dereck Joubert, noted conservationist and CEO of Great Plains Conservation. “The hundred-vehicle Maasai Mara scenes we now see around a single lion just don’t happen (are not allowed to happen) in the conservancies.”
It’s also important that the local population is investing protection of animals, and that they too benefit. “We are able to provide revenues for the communities,” says Joubert, as conservancies and concessions are often leased from local owners. For example, Mara North was established by Maasai landowners and about a dozen lodges, with visitors fees covering land leases (paid to locals), rangers’ salaries, and community projects.
It was a good thing I was staying at Mara Toto Tree Camp (I didn’t know to ask if they had access to a private conservancy, so I got lucky that they had one), but now I know to ask the question during the planning process – because the answer won’t just shape my trip, it will shape the future of the places I’ve come so far to see.
This is something I kept front of mind while planning my upcoming safari to Zambia and Zimbabwe with Timbuktu Travel. This time, I asked the question upfront, looking for private concessions outside the most popular reserves and national parks, and letting the answer guide the itinerary – highlighting meaningful conservation success stories, such as Zambia’s Lolelunga Private Reserve. In partnership with the Cheetah Metapopulation Initiative, it has reintroduced endangered cheetahs, recently celebrating the birth of three healthy cubs. With fewer than 100 cheetahs remaining in the wild in Zambia, it’s a milestone of hope.
In Zimbabwe, Great Plain’s Tembo Plains Camp stands apart. Like Kenya’s Maasai Mara, Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools National Park is becoming increasingly crowded and uncontrolled, but this concession, a former hunting area, has been developed and protected by Great Plains for the past seven years, with the reintroduction of more than a hundred elephants and thousands of other animals, including African painted dogs. “We only have 12 beds in 280,000 acres; it’s probably the lowest tourism footprint in any operation in Africa!” says Joubert.
I think back on my time in the Mara with reverence. I could easily fill pages with stories beyond that first cheetah kill – it only got better from there, partially because I had the space to enjoy it. “A safari is a very personal experience, a private one where one should be allowed to commune with the personal and spiritual moment of being so close to nature and wildlife,” Joubert says. “You just can’t do that in a crowd. That is important to us. Philosophers and poets have forever sought out quiet places – that is where we are.” And that’s where I want to be too.
