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.”
