ON PRIVATE GUIDING

These days, there are a number of options for privately guided safari services.

Many guides look to leading private trips after a few years spent driving in camps & lodges. Much like any specialist trade, the best guides are those with multiple decades experience across a range of locations, situations & life experiences.

When it comes to delivering a life-changing (& usually very costly) safari experience, I would like to think that the guide & the support team behind them are one of, if not the most important piece of the puzzle; much in the same way as the architect is of a new house build. Considering the costs of a private guide are divided into the full travel group, it is a relatively small part of the trip expense for a large portion of the value add.

The term “private guide” is perhaps misleading somewhat, as the truth is that the services provided by the top safari guides these days go well above & beyond simply being a glorified hand-holder for a group of private safari-goers.

We are first & foremost your hosts during your time in the wilderness. This is not to say that the camps, lodges or hotels you will stay in do not have great hospitality teams but there is something about having a personal host who is an expert in the area there to oversee all those little touches that one would expect when visiting someone in their own home.

Secondly, private guides are generally some of the best of the best of wilderness guides out there. They have an incredible wealth of ‘bush’ knowledge from everything from butterfly reproduction to the effects of climate change on predator-prey relationships. They can track lions through thick bush (often with the aid of local indigenous trackers) and can safely get you in (& out!) of a rare but potentially hairy black rhino sighting on foot. They understand weather patterns, moon phases & seasons and how this will affect the viewing of the mother leopard & her cubs that evening. And yet, they can also have an informed discussion around the impacts of post-colonial economics on the greater conservation landscape, and provide you with a history lesson of the sub-Saharan Africa in line with that one would expect at a university.

Next up – and following from the previous point – the good private guides out there are storytellers at heart. Around the fireside in the evening, or on inspiring safari drives across the savanna, they can weave all the various threads of your travel experience into an absorbing, funny, deeply moving, vivid allegory that helps explain so much more than the wild animals and places you are witnessing on safari. The stories they reveal are oftentimes life-changing, opening up whole new insights & perspectives into our world, external & internal.

Through the story weaving process, the best private guides are able to provide a level of consistency, minimizing on repetition across camps or areas, and ensuring that each moment of the safari is tailored for the specific needs of the guests that they are travelling with – yourselves. They work closely with the local guides, cultures & tribes to ensure their unique insights & indigenous knowledge of their specific area (& the wildlife that lives there) are included in the overall trip narrative with the correct levels of sensitivity, meaning & importance.

Having a private guide along on the trip with you also ensures a seamless travel experience, almost as if you were travelling with your personal assistant, camp manager, concierge & sommelier all in one.

Having lived & worked in many of the lodges & camps (& oftentimes owned their own camps too), they understand exactly how they tick and able to liaise with the camp staff to make sure all your requirements are met, and expectations exceeded. Therefore, through our own experiences of camp life, we’re able to help smooth any unexpected glitches that may arise along the way.

More than anything, we are here to provide you with an unfiltered, real and deeply personal safari experience. Through our network of contacts and experience in the field, we are able to show you behind-the-scenes of these idyllic destinations – the parts that perhaps don’t show up on Instagram or the travel brochures. We love nothing more than to sit around a campfire, wine glass in hand, spit balling possible solutions with our guests around the many challenges facing our natural world today.

We are there to help guide your understanding of the crisis that life on earth is facing and provide a glimpse through these beautiful destinations we share with you, of some of the lessons we can perhaps glean from nature to move forwards positively & consciously.

Most importantly we provide a role much like a great DJ does at a party – we are there to help raise the frequency of the safari experience for our guests to one that has long-lasting positive impacts, and that is entirely connected to the intrinsic beauty of the wild spaces.