safari

Safari in Africa

Safari in Africa — Serengeti, Tanzania

Safari means “long journey” in Swahili. Today you can reach almost any reserve out in the bush within a day from an airport. It’s still a long journey — but not like in the old days, when an itinerary could accommodate trains to southern Spain, ships to Africa, and then cars, small planes and a long walk with porters and guides before a flapping tent was pitched on the bare ground. It took weeks. Pure Karen Blixen.

For many, a safari is the journey of a lifetime: untouched nature, the great wildlife and a tranquility that is not found anywhere else. Here you will find our safari countries, gathered in one place — and under each country the courses, lodges and tours. Read the great introduction to safari if you want to delve deeper first.

Some countries are best for a first safari — easy access to the animals and comfortable lodges; others entice the experienced who wants to see something completely new. Choose according to where you are on your safari trip.

Choose your safari country

Plan your safari

Luxury safari

  • Lion Sands — luxury safari resort, beyond belief

Travel agency with safari on the program?

Safari is one of the most sought-after — and most exclusive — forms of travel we cover. If you are a travel agency, lodge or safari operator, your trips can be listed here and in the individual country articles where Danish safari travelers plan. Write to us about a collaboration.

Lion in the dry bush landscape of southern Africa
The Big Five is a hunting term — not a list of the five largest animals

The Big Five doesn't mean what most people think

Lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and buffalo. The list does not come from biology or size — it was made by big game hunters and is a ranking of the five animals that were most dangerous to hunt on foot. That is why the hippopotamus is not included, even though it kills more people, and why the relatively small leopard stands side by side with the elephant. Today, the word has become a sales argument, and it is worth remembering that it was never a promise of what you will see. In several reserves, the rhino is the hardest to find, and the leopard cannot be ordered.

The Great Migration Has Two Seasons, and They're Not Similar

About a million and a half wildebeest, plus hundreds of thousands of zebras and gazelles, move in a loop through the Serengeti and Masai Mara year-round. Most people imagine the river crossings, where the animals plunge into the Mara River among crocodiles — they typically take place from July to October in the northern Serengeti and in the Masai Mara. But the second season is at least as intense and far less visited: the calving season on the short grass steppes around Ndutu in the southern Serengeti in January and February, when hundreds of thousands of calves are born within a few weeks. The predators then gather, and the density of cats is higher than at any other time of year.

The practical: choose area by month, not month by area. When to travel to the Serengeti in the year goes through it month by month, and the gigantic animal migration explains the loop itself.

Fifteen kilos in a soft bag

This is the rule that surprises most people. Transfers between camps in Botswana, Tanzania and Zambia take place in small planes, where the luggage limit is typically 15 to 20 kilos including hand luggage, and where the bag must be soft because the cargo hold is not square. A hard case will be rejected at the ramp, regardless of its weight. Most camps, on the other hand, have a laundry service every day, precisely for this reason, so three sets of clothes will last for two weeks.

What differentiates the countries

Botswana has chosen to have few beds at a high price and therefore has empty horizons, while the Okavango Delta is a completely different kind of safari — in a mokoro and on foot rather than by car. South Africa is the easiest place to start, because Kruger can be driven in your own car, and because it is malaria-free in several of the private reserves. Namibia is a desert safari with lower animal density and the most dramatic landscapes, and Uganda is the place for mountain gorillas, which is a completely different price and permit class. How much does a safari in Africa cost? puts the differences into numbers.

The day on a safari is not free.

The animals are active at first and last light, so a safari day is divided into two: departure in the dark around half past five, back for brunch at ten, rest through the midday heat and out again at four. Nothing happens in the middle of the day, and most camps don't even let the cars out. It's a rhythm that surprises many on their first trip, and makes a safari more strenuous than the brochure pictures suggest — a fortnight in a row is too much for most people, and a week in the bush followed by a few days at the coast is the combination most people end up preferring.

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