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Few travel experiences rival the magic of an African safari. To embark on one is to surrender to the rhythm of the wild: rising before dawn for a game drive as the bush stirs awake, and closing the day with a sundowner as the horizon dissolves into one of the continent s surreal sunsets.
Unbeknownst to some travelers, safaris take many forms: open-vehicle game drives across sweeping plains, intimate walking safaris with expert trackers, canoe journeys along river channels, and even ocean safaris that unveil a world of hidden coral reefs and aquatic species. But what makes today’s safaris remarkable is not just the wildlife, but the people who bring the experience to life. A decade ago, few lodges prioritized this connection; now, many are community-owned or community-led, ensuring travelers learn from those with generational knowledge while supporting livelihoods that safeguard these landscapes.
From gorilla trekking in Rwanda and Uganda to visiting meerkat colonies and watching elephants wade through Botswana’s thriving waterways, these are 15 of the most remarkable African safaris.
Witnessing elephants cross channels filled with glimmering reeds as their calves splash in the shallows is one of the world’s great spectacles—and all that and more is possible at Wilderness DumaTau in the Linyanti Wildlife Reserve in northern Botswana, one of Africa’s most important elephant corridors. With access to the Linyanti River floodplain and the Savuti Channel, the property offers peak wildlife viewing with luxury accommodations to match, especially the expansive common area, inclusive of a library, bar, and restaurant, all framing the Kwando River and a floating fire pit located on the shores. Then there are the eight spacious and airy tented suites, each with river views, a private plunge pool, raised wooden walkways, and floor-to-ceiling windows shaded by towering acacia trees that perfectly frame the wilderness, offering an ideal perch for daydreaming. During a safari, you can learn from guides from the area and nearby regions, as well as researchers working on migration and anti-poaching initiatives, making conservation an integral part of the experience. But even above game drives to track the illustrious pack of wild dogs that roam the area, a visit here is about being on the water: boat rides gliding past hippos, crocodiles, and elephants feeding on waterlilies in the reeds.
In the far west of Zambia, the Liuwa Plain feels as if it stretches into eternity. When you arrive by helicopter, it’s like the golden grasses glow so brightly under the blue sky that it’s almost as if the landscape swallows you whole. Although King Lewanika Lodge offers all the fineries of a traditional luxury safari camp, including elevated tented villas, it’s unmatched in terms of access. It’s the only permanent camp in the area, offering a rare glimpse of wildlife in its rawest, most natural form—and Africa’s second-largest wildebeest migration. What makes Liuwa Plain unique is not only its ecosystem—where hyenas, not lions, are the apex predator—but also because the entire reserve is managed by African Parks, which has partnered with local communities to safeguard the region for years to come. During game drives, you may witness wildebeest, cheetahs, and packs of hyenas or wild dogs hunting in complex coordination, while learning how the camp creates jobs in one of the most remote corners of the continent and ensures wildlife conservation directly benefits nearby villages.
At the edge of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Bwindi Lodge is a jungle paradise comprised of thatched-roof suites, known as bandas, each perched above a valley alive with monkeys and birds sounding their calls. When you arrive here, you’ll quickly realize the forest is the star of the show, dense and verdant and where gorilla trekking offers one of the most intimate wildlife encounters on Earth. You’ll set out on a trekking journey while expert guides clear your path through the vines, hoping for that moment where you can lock eyes with an imposing silverback in the wild. However, a stay at Bwindi is also about forming connections with the community, as the lodge supports community initiatives such as the Bwindi Bar training program or the Mubare Bee-keeping project, both of which provide livelihoods for families who once relied on gorilla poaching. This ensures that conservation success is shared and beneficial for all who live in the region. While you’re there, you’ll also have the chance to meet with artisans, weavers, and coffee growers who provide the perfect brew to enjoy on your journey.
Perched atop a dramatic escarpment in Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains National Park, where jagged mountain peaks meet a verdant valley, Limalimo Lodge is a community-focused project that offers a rare glimpse into the region’s wilderness. With the support of the African Wildlife Foundation, founders and mountain guides Shiferaw Asrat and Meles Yemata opened the lodge in 2016, with a vision of showcasing the beauty of the national park while also benefiting the households and communities within the park boundaries through tourism. The result is a sustainable and low-impact design consisting of 14 rooms made from rammed earth, wood, and thatch, each surrounded by fragrant juniper, olive, and acacia trees. The lodge employs local staff and sources much of its produce from nearby areas, ensuring that the community thrives alongside conservation efforts. With regional residents and experts as your guides, you can enjoy walking treks across cliffs where groups of 200 or more gelada monkeys graze in vast troops, while lammergeiers wheel overhead, dropping bones to crack them on the rocks. If you’re lucky, you can even spot a horned Walia Ibex, Ethiopian wolf, leopard, or hyena.
Although there’s no thrill quite like witnessing lemurs in the wild, arriving at Miavana is certainly part of the adventure: You journey via helicopter over baobab forests and turquoise waters before setting down on a sliver of white sand off Madagascar’s northeastern coast, where villas line a lagoon so still it looks like glass. Although it’s the most luxurious resort in the country, Miavana has a laid-back appeal: When guests aren’t on guided excursions, they can mostly be found barefoot and relaxing by the beach or on their stone-and-wood pavilions that spill onto private beaches, with plunge pools and breezy living rooms designed for afternoons of lazing in the sun. Of course, travelers really come here to glimpse Madagascar’s most famous species, crowned lemurs, which require trips inland to track, but there are offshore adventures, too, as the sea surrounding the property teems with life. You can snorkel among parrotfish, dive with manta rays, or watch humpback whales breach along the horizon.
Situated along the banks of the South Luangwa River, Time + Tide Chinzombo offers access to one of Zambia’s most storied parks, known as the birthplace of the walking safari. The lodge sits on a bend of the Luangwa River, shaded by ancient msikizi trees, and each of its six expansive villas is crafted from steel, canvas, and natural timber, featuring dipping tubs and wooden decks with plunge pools that face the water. On arrival, you get a sense of the camp being both elegant and untamed as hippos grunt their tunes, while days here follow the rhythm of the bush: morning drives may lead you to track wild dogs coursing across the plains, leopards stealthily hunting from the shadows, and lions sprawled out in the shade before building energy to hunt their next meal. Walking safaris were pioneered in the South Luangwa decades ago by the legendary Norman Carr alongside the region’s expert trackers and remain the most intimate way to explore the area. This unique experience allows you to slow down and savor life in the bush by reading tracks in the sand and listening to animal calls, which serve as a means to guide your next steps.
Kruger National Park is perhaps South Africa’s greatest wilderness, and Singita Lebombo claims one of its most dramatic perches. Located within a 33,000-acre private concession in the southeastern reaches of the park, where sheer basalt cliffs give way to the rolling ridges of the Lebombo Mountains, each of the camp’s glass-walled suites is suspended above the N’wanetsi River and inspired by the eagles’ nests built into the cliff face. Interiors are open, modern, and drenched in light, with decks that invite long afternoons watching giraffes pass below. Guides transport you on two daily game drives that lead you into a territory where famously large prides of lions patrol the riverbeds, leopards drape themselves in the trees, and herds of elephants churn the savanna dust. After the thrill of game drives, the lodge offers a relaxing respite, with rooftop stargazing and tastings from an award-winning wine cellar at the ready.
Set along the Zambezi River within Zambezi National Park, Mpala Jena is where riverside safari dreams come to life—a transportive stay granting you access to the famous and thundering Victoria Falls. Each of the camp’s villas is built with canvas tents that billow in the breeze, opening onto hardwood decks where elephants wander to drink and hippos sound their warning calls at any species who dare venture too near their territory. This camp is elegant yet unpretentious, featuring numerous indoor-outdoor living spaces constructed under thatch and stone. A portion of every stay helps fund both conservation and development in surrounding villages, especially the Zambezi Parks Support Foundation, which has made significant strides in conservation and anti-poaching efforts. From camp, you’ll take boat safaris past hippos, baboons, and crocodiles basking on sandbanks, while game drives explore the floodplains, where lions prowl and giraffes browse the acacia trees.
Perched more than 1,000 feet high on the edge of the Oloololo Escarpment, Angama Mara is located within a 1,700-acre expanse directly bordering the Mara Triangle, with nearly a mile of Rift Valley frontage opening to Africa’s most iconic view: the endless grasslands of the Maasai Mara, where the Great Migration surges across rivers in a frenzy of dust and hooves. Each of the glass-fronted suites features private decks and spacious interiors, all hovering above the plains, so at sunrise you feel suspended between worlds as the light falls over the Mara. Most days, you’ll begin early to take a hot air balloon ride above the plains or to venture out on game drives to scout the best of the area’s wildlife, enjoying a picnic breakfast or lunch under a desert date tree. But Angama is not only about glimpsing lions, leopards, elephants, and black rhinos: It’s also about the people who shape the landscape, especially Maasai naturalists who share their generational knowledge of the area’s plants and wildlife. Through the Angama Foundation, the lodge also supports schools, scholarships, and clinics, fostering a community partnership that ensures tourism benefits extend far beyond the escarpment.
Set in northern Tanzania—within the private, 350,000-acre Singita Grumeti Reserve—Singita Sasakwa rises from a hilltop like an Edwardian manor transplanted in the middle of the savanna. Within the vast Serengeti Mara ecosystem, the camp offers amenities such as tennis courts, an equestrian center, and a spa, as well as chic cottages featuring stone verandas, chandeliers sparkling above vintage chests, and private infinity pools. Despite its stately elegance, Singita Sasakwa is at the heart of the action, situated in a portion of the Serengeti where the annual migration takes place, with hundreds of thousands of wildebeest and zebra moving through the reserve. Year-round, buffalo, elephants, and the critically endangered eastern black rhino can be spotted, and during game drives, expert guides work hard to grant you glimpses of lions, cheetahs, and giraffes. The exclusivity of Grumeti means fewer vehicles than in the central Serengeti, making every sighting feel intimate and special.
While this may not be your typical safari where visions of spotting the Big Five takes center-stage, a trip to Kaya Mawa Island Lodge on Lake Malawi, one of the world’s deepest lakes, is about the more romantic side of life: dinner by starlight, open-air massages, and snorkelling in turquoise waters to spot hundreds of species of jewel-toned cichlid fish, found nowhere else on earth. Arriving here means crossing the glassy lake by boat, with waves lapping you gently to shore until you step onto Likoma Island’s golden sands. The lodge blends seamlessly with the island s traditional architecture: 11 stone-and-thatch cottages built into boulders, with hammocks strung over turquoise shallows and terraces that invite you to slip straight into the water. Life here is about slow travel and barefoot living, especially kayaking to nearby coves and sailing dhows ahead of dinner for some of the best sunset views in Africa.
Set within a natural amphitheater with views of the stunning Virunga volcanoes, Wilderness Bisate Lodge is one of Rwanda’s newest—and already most iconic—retreats. Its forest villas are an architectural showstopper, each inspired by traditional design and rising from reforested hillsides where saplings now grow tall, part of the lodge’s ambitious habitat restoration project. The lodge is the gateway to Volcanoes National Park, where your mornings begin with gorilla treks through bamboo and mist until you encounter a family in the wild. The experience requires quite the effort but is undoubtedly transformative. Your reward is returning to the lodge, where conservation and luxury merge, amidst fineries such as a wine cellar, library, and restaurant. New to the lodge is the opening of The Sanctuary at Bisate, a dedicated wellness haven with a fully equipped fitness center, heated saltwater indoor lap pool, steam room and ice bath, and a collection of serene meditation pods to connect you with the natural world on a spiritual level—especially after the exhilarating thrill of trekking to see gorillas in the wild.
In northern Namibia’s remote Kaokoveld wilderness, the desert stretches in waves beneath endless skies, where towering mountains, rolling sand dunes, and ancient dry riverbeds are the backdrop to nomadic settlements. At the center of this expanse is the Hoanib Valley Camp, a respite situated on stilts above the arid landscape and home to six wood and canvas tents built to blend seamlessly with the surroundings. The camp operates through a partnership between Natural Selection, the Sesfontein area’s Himba and Herero communities, and the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, ensuring that tourism supports both cultural livelihoods and wildlife conservation. When you first arrive, you’ll be met by lead guides from the communities and likely be surprised by how the vastness of the landscape lends to silence, yet the land isn’t empty. It’s rife with desert-adapted elephants wandering through dry riverbeds, lions padding across dunes, and giraffes drifting through thorn scrub, all of which you can see on game drives as your guides lead you into the wilderness.
Situated off the coast of Mozambique within the protected marine reserve of the Bazaruto Archipelago National Park is a scatter of islands adrift in turquoise seas. When you first arrive at &Beyond Benguerra Island, you’ll be escorted to your thatched-roof casita nestled under the shade of billowing palms, replete with your very own private plunge pool, shaded veranda, and access to a beach that stretches unbroken for miles. A stay here isn’t about going on game drives, as it’s all centered around days defined by the sea: diving into coral reefs alive with parrotfish, snorkeling with wild dolphins, riding horses into the ocean, or watching humpback whales breach in season. If you’re lucky, your adventures will lead you to spot an elusive dugong, among the ocean’s rarest mammals and one of only four fully aquatic herbivorous mammals in the world. Between adventures, enjoy lazy afternoon hammock naps, sunset rides on a dhow boat, and candlelit dinners on the beach as waves curl onto powdery sand.
