Northern Safari

This is a “part participation safari”, you are only required to pitch and fold down your own tent. All cooking, cleaning and any other camp chores will be taken care of by the safari camp-hands, made up of an experienced safari guide and a camp assistant.

This safari does not include your drinks which will need to be purchased before you leave. We will help you with this.

The tents are 2.1m x 2.1m x 1.75m high, easy-to-erect bow tents, which have treated mosquito mesh covering all the windows and doors.

We provide 5cm high-density foam camping mattresses for each guest. You will need to provide your own sleeping bag. However, you can hire one from Safari Lifestyles (contact us for costs).

The bush ablutions consist of high-slung bucket showers and bush toilets with private canvas screens. These ablutions are on a shared basis.

• The day starts early because that’s when the animals are out. You’ll have coffee and a bite to eat around the fire before dawn, then head straight out for a game drive, walk, or boat trip depending on where you’re staying.
• After a few hours tracking wildlife, your guide will pull over somewhere scenic for tea and biscuits. You’ll be back at camp by mid-morning with time to wash up at your basin before brunch—usually fresh bread, something warm from the kitchen, and cold salads.
• The middle of the day is yours to sleep, read, take a proper shower, or just sit and absorb what you saw that morning. Late afternoon you’ll head out again for another drive or boat outing. In private areas outside the national parks, these can run past sunset with a spotlight to pick up leopards, genets, and other nocturnal animals that don’t show themselves during the day.
• That’s the general rhythm, though your guide will adjust things based on what’s actually happening—where the elephants are moving, if there’s been a recent kill, weather changes, that sort of thing. No two days run exactly the same.

• Moving days start earlier than usual. You’ll pack up after a quick coffee, then drive to a scenic spot for a proper breakfast—maybe overlooking a floodplain or dried riverbed. From there, it’s game viewing while traveling toward your next camp, with stops for tea and biscuits along the way.
• Lunch happens under whatever big trees your guide finds, usually acacia or sausage trees with decent shade. By that point you’re close enough to the new camp that the crew has already driven ahead and set everything up. You’ll arrive to find your tent standing exactly as it was that morning, just in a completely different landscape.
• There’s time for a shower and afternoon tea before heading out to explore the new area—different waterholes, different vegetation, often completely different animals than what you were seeing the day before.
• The timing on these travel days shifts around depending on distance, road conditions, and what wildlife shows up along the route. If there’s a pride of lions on a kill or a big elephant herd blocking the track, you might spend an extra hour there and compress something else. Your guide will read the situation and adjust accordingly. The drive times given are just the actual driving—they don’t account for the inevitable stops when something interesting crosses your path.