On our experience radar

If you’re after travel that steps away from the gold-tap luxury of the safari lodge and focuses on a more intentional, personalised, and active style of adventure, then you’ve come to the right place. Exploring quietness, the opportunity to reflect, time with loved ones, and the excitement of the wonderfully different, our exploration team shares below four experiences that place nature front and centre, and that naturally give space to a slower form of travel. Let’s jump in.      

Look at the stars

‘I have always had a love for the sky at night, and particularly in Africa, where the skies feel so much bigger. It’s a delight that dark sky travel (astrotourism) is gaining momentum as we enter the peak of the sun’s 11-year solar activity cycle.

We’ve been turning to the stars as our guides for centuries, so no surprise, given the sheer busyness of our everyday lives, that there is an increasing need for the quiet and peaceful act of simply lying under the night sky. When people travel to a destination especially for its stargazing opportunities or to witness rare cosmic events like meteor showers or eclipses, they are also getting as far away from the city as they can possibly get. The kind of specialised dark sky travel itineraries we’ve been developing do exactly this and, at the same time, introduce clients to the most remote landscapes and an unusual set of nocturnal activities.

The most obvious destination has to be Namibia’s NamibRand Nature Reserve, the continent’s only official International Dark Sky Reserve. The dry climate and immense desert landscapes of the Namib Desert make it one of the best places on Earth for studying the stars. Not far behind in terms of quality of experience, the northern Kruger National Park and Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa, along with the Kalahari Desert in either the Northern Cape or over the border in Botswana, are all great dark sky travel destinations

– Frankie McCarthy, Travel Design Partner

Spotlight:

Set against the spectacular backdrop of the NamibRand mountains, and overlooking the desert plains and dunes of the Namib Desert, Kwessi Dunes offers guests a front-row seat to one of the darkest skies on the planet with each suite having its own open-air room complete with a ‘star-bed’ to fall asleep under the stars.

In the Kalahari in South Africa’s Northern Cape, Tswalu gives guests an equally magical opportunity to sleep under the stars with their open-air platform, Naledi, which overlooks the Korannaberg Mountains, or Malori, a romantic tent set within the savannah dunes.

Adventure from great heights

‘Travelling to Lake Natron in Tanzania is one of those experiences we recommend to clients especially interested in unusually vast landscapes—land so beautiful it leaves most of us lost for words.

Lake Natron is a salt lake spanning southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. Not far from the lake’s southern shore is Ol Doinyo Lengai (Mountain of God). At 3000 metres tall, it is the only active carbonatite volcano in the world, with an unusually low temperature and highly fluid type of magma. The overnight ascent is a challenging four to six-hour hike, reaching the summit at daybreak. Alternatively, you could take a helicopter ride (weather permitting) and reach the rim of the crater after only half an hour of hiking.

A helicopter flight over Lake Natron at the end of the dry season (end of October) is absolutely stunning, especially if you enjoy aerial photography. The salt pans and mineral crust on the lake are a mosaic of red, gold, black, brown, and sometimes even green colours. Both Lesser and Greater Flamingo dot the lake in large numbers. On the southern side, the flamingoes lay their eggs on tiny islands just off the shore. Giraffe, wildebeest, and zebra can be found just southwest of the lake and to the southeast, caustic springs are welling up from underground.

There’s a spectacular mountain range to the west of Lake Natron, and just a short hop further south will take you to Empakai Crater, a beautiful landmark without any roads or settlements, and another excellent spot to see flamingoes.’

– Mij Evans, Travel Design Partner  

Lake Natron by Squack Evans

Spotlight:

Orkeju Camp is an ideal base for exploring this beautiful landscape, whether you want to explore on foot, by helicopter or by vehicle.

If travelling to Kenya as well, then Ndoto House would combine well with and complement Orkeju Camp, and serve as a base for larger groups of friends and families looking for a high-end private home from which to explore the northern tip of the lake and its surrounds.

Space to be free

‘It was wonderful to see – on an Instagram post, no less – Botswana ranked as a top five country for ‘best to see wildlife’, and featured amongst a list of ‘best for adventure’, ‘best for food’, ‘best for sightseeing’, and so on.

As anyone lucky enough to have flown across it in a helicopter, Botswana is a country where its wildernesses are so extensive their far-off horizons curve, proof if ever it were required that the earth is indeed round. The Okavango Delta, its jewel in an already wonderfully bejewelled crown, is one such wilderness, so large that we might be forgiven for believing that no amount of tourism could impact its space and delicate ecosystems.

Unfortunately, our reputation for being the best for this and best for that means the original low-volume, high-value proposition has been diluted by higher-volume operations offering luxury and tick-box experiences. Our once little industry has grown considerably and is, on the surface of things, in danger of becoming exactly what it never aspired to be: a mainstream tourist safari destination.

But only on the surface of things because Botswana (especially its Okavango and neighbouring Makgadikgadi Pans) is still a space without many: discovering what it really has to offer just takes a little digging. And one of the absolute best digs, to exhaust the analogy, is a safari that combines the redoubtable Beagle Adventures with Natural Selection’s latest product, the super stripped-back Jack’s Private Camp.

Since its inception, Beagle Expeditions has walked the safari talk, offering an experience that takes guests into the heart of what it means to be in the real wild, a private mobile led by the very best guides I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Offering space as the only luxury worth having, it traverses wildernesses bereft of other vehicles, the visceral poetics of walking the savanna with the broad brushstroke narrative described by the occasional helicopter trip. This is the freedom we late moderns strive for.

It is exactly this freedom that one finds in the Makgadikgadi Pans, where Jack’s Private Camp serves as a destination for those of us intent on seeking out the everything in the nothing, the total lack of stimuli becomes the stimuli itself, a revelation unlocked by some careful planning around the seasons and by a night out on the pans on a small ‘bedroll’ and not much else. It’s here, lying beneath the stars and surrounded by the desert night, that great space affords us the freedom to, as Will Jones has written elsewhere, ‘think and reflect on where you are and what you have done’.’

– Kyle de Nobrega, Exploration Specialist

Kweene Trails, Okavango Delta

spotlight:

A journey between two camps in diverse habitat zones of the Okavango Delta accessible only by helicopter, Kweene Trails is a truly wild journey into one of Botswana’s last remaining remote wilderness areas. Guests begin their adventure at Kweene River Camp in the southern part of the Kweene River, a periodic swamp habitat with arid conditions and grass-dominated floodplains. Then the journey ends further north of the river system at Magwegwe Camp, a seasonal swamp habitat of endless floodplains, overgrown islands and year-round water flow.

Sister property to the much-loved Jack’s Camp, which has been in operation since 1993, Jack’s Private Camp is its latest addition designed for multi-generational families and privately guided groups of friends seeking a more tailored and private desert safari into some of the largest salt pans in the world.

Personal and private

‘It’s exciting to see a big shift towards the private retreat, where modern travellers seek remoteness, deep rest, solitude and the freedom to tailor each day’s activities to their wishes and interests.

The private home brings families and groups of friends together at their own pace, awarding a level of independence that makes for a more intentional, intimate and memorable experience. This means a level of service that is unobtrusive yet attentive and a team on the ground that understands exactly how to get even the smallest details right.

Singita and Arijuju jump to mind as the original masters in conducting the finest of private adventures. Unlike in national parks, where movement is restricted, the private home located on a private conservancy or community land offers up the perfect counterfoil. It often includes access to horse riding, running trails, biking, private tennis courts, sleepouts and walking on foot, many of which cannot be offered inside parks and reserves. In short, it grants its guests the freedom to roam and discover the magic of safari on their terms.’

– Will Jones, Chief Exploration Officer  

spotlight:

Arijiju Retreat is a five-bedroom exclusive-use villa almost entirely hidden in a hillside on the Borana Conservancy in northern Kenya’s Laikipia Plateau. One of the pioneers of what might be called the ‘healing safari’, Arijuju grants guests access to some of the best wellness facilities of any private home in Africa, including tailored menus, running trails, a spa and gym, a Hammam, a yoga deck, and clay tennis courts. It really is that healthily good.