Obsessed with lions? Want to walk among mountain gorillas? Spot the elusive leopard? Whatever wildlife you want to see, long-time safari expert and author Brian Jackman recommends the best safari for you.

The Maasai Mara, Kenya

Everyone who dreams of going on safari wants to see a lion, and Kenya never disappoints. The Maasai Mara Game Reserve and its adjoining wildlife conservancies are home to some of the biggest concentrations of lions on earth, including the enigmatic Marsh Pride – celebrated in countless TV documentaries, from the BBC’s Dynasties series to Animal Planet’s Big Cat Tales. If you take just one safari in your lifetime, this is the one to choose.
Kenya is where I saw my first lion – a pride male with a luxuriant mane – and heard him greeting the dawn across the dew-soaked savannahs of the reserve. Today lions still walk through my life and my dreams, as they will yours when you have heard them roaring in the night or watched them returning with bloody jowls and full bellies after a night’s hunting on the acacia-studded plains.
Long acknowledged as the true home of safari (a Swahili word meaning journey), Kenya is also where Geoffrey Kent, Abercrombie & Kent’s Founder and Chairman Emeritus, grew up. Fly to the capital Nairobi, spend a night there, then catch an early-morning bush flight to the Mara for a life-changing first breakfast in the heart of lion country.

Olanana Lodge, an A&K Sanctuary, is ideally located for spotting lions in the Maasai Mara, a destination included in a range of A&K Tailormade Journeys, bespoke safaris and Small Group Journeys.

South Luangwa, Zambia

High in the branches of a kigelia tree crouched a leopard, the most exquisite of cats, her lustrous coat perfectly camouflaged by the dappled light and shade. I watched as impala gathered around the base of the tree, feeding on its fallen flowers, unaware that 20ft above them lay sudden death in a spotted coat.
Leopards are largely nocturnal in their behaviour. Yet in the riverine woodlands of South Luangwa such encounters as this can happen at any time, making this magical valley the best place I know for finding these notoriously shy and elusive carnivores.
Once known as the Valley of the Elephants, South Luangwa is also renowned for its enormous herds of buffalo and feisty lion prides, all dependent on the presence of the Luangwa River for their survival. At the end of your safari, though, it is the leopards you will remember most.

A&K can take you to the heart of leopard country on safari in in South Luangwa with the option of staying at Chinzombo – a riverside lodge that can be accessed only by boat.

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

When you stay at a camp in the Serengeti, it is likely to be somewhere among the glades of acacias with their iconic flat-roofed canopies. But once you leave the woodlands there is nothing but a sea of grass, broken only by the silhouettes of kopjes (large, free-standing granite outcrops) lying hull-down on the horizon. These open plains are the hunting grounds of the cheetahs you have come to see, and in the whole of Africa there is nowhere better to watch them pursuing gazelles in the golden hour before sundown when the savannah is flooded with amber light.

Searching for them, you come under the spell of the plains themselves. Their remoteness takes hold of you and the land has a swell to it, like the rise and fall of the sea, luring you on to some new delight, a golden jackal, a pair of bat-eared foxes, a cavalcade of zebras or another cheetah rising out of the grass in front of you.

We can arrange stays at Kichakani Camp, an A&K Sanctuary, which switches between two locations in the Serengeti twice a year.

Northern Damaraland, Namibia

Solitary, wary and notoriously grumpy, South-western black rhinos are hooked-lipped browsers with pin-sharp hearing but very poor sight – and approaching these leftover prehistoric giants on foot is not for those of a nervous disposition. However, it is an unforgettable way to see this critically endangered sub-species of rhino up close.
You can do so at Desert Rhino Camp in northern Damaraland, a place as remarkable for its remote location as its unique wildlife experiences. From the canyonlands of Namib Naukluft to the shipwreck shores of the Skeleton Coast, Namibia is a country where scenery competes with the animals for the visitor’s attention. It is the last true wilderness in southern Africa and much of it is desert. Its Martian-red sand dunes are the highest in the world. Some of its rivers do not run for years, and in some places no rain has fallen for decades.
For those who love such wild landscapes, the appeal is irresistible – and many come as much for the remoteness as the rhinos. Make sure you make the most of both.

Stay at Desert Rhino Camp in Damaraland, tracking black rhinos on foot and by vehicle, as part of a bespoke A&K safari in Namibia.

Tsavo National Park, Kenya

For most visitors, the main attraction of Tsavo is its population of brick-red elephants, the same striking colour as the park’s laterite soil and including bulls with tusks so long they sometimes touch the ground. These legendary “tuskers” are among the last of their kind – a living memory of a vanishing Africa.
Indeed, it was to protect Kenya’s last great elephant herds that Tsavo was created in 1948. Only an area 14 times the size of Greater London or Houston, Texas, would be big enough – and Tsavo had always been elephant country. Today, it is still East Africa’s biggest big game sanctuary, administered as two separate parks – Tsavo West and Tsavo East – lying either side of the Nairobi-to Mombasa highway. The lions that lurk in its thorny thickets have scrawny manes and may well be descended from the two notorious “Man-Eaters of Tsavo” which terrorised the builders of the Mombasa-to-Nairobi railway line in 1892.

Stay at Finch Hattons camp, in the south of Tsavo National Park, and take daily game drives into elephant country on aN A&K Kenya safari tailored to your needs.

Mountain gorillas share 98% of their DNA with humans, so meeting them in person in their forest stronghold is one of Africa's greatest wildlife adventures

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda

From the Mountains of the Moon to the shores of Lake Victoria, this luxuriant land of mighty rivers and thundering waterfalls cries out to be visited. Here are game-rich savannahs as spectacular as any elsewhere in East Africa; but Uganda’s standout features are its ancient rainforests and their most sought-after wild inhabitant – the magnificent mountain gorilla.
With family groups led by an adult male silverback weighing anything up to 260lbs, these gentle giants share over 98 per cent of their DNA with humans, so it is hardly surprising that meeting them up close and personal in their forest strongholds is one of Africa’s greatest wildlife adventures.
Half of Africa’s entire population of mountain gorillas live in the hills and valleys of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, and A&K Sanctuary Gorilla Forest Lodge, set deep inside the park, is the best place from which to track them on foot and see other forest species such as Colobus monkeys.

Our Tailormade Journey, Gorilla Trekking in Uganda, includes a stay at Gorilla Forest Lodge, an A&K Sanctuary, plus wildlife experiences in three of Uganda’s national parks.

Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe

With their big bat ears and brindled coats, wild dogs are the painted wolves of Africa. Reviled by some for the gruesomely efficient way in which they despatch their prey, they are endlessly fascinating to watch, especially when there are pups to feed. It happens every time the adults return from a hunt, to be greeted with a frenzied burst of twittering cries and wagging tales as the pups emerge from their den,
Now rare and endangered throughout their range, they can still be seen in packs at one or two reserves in East and Southern Africa – if you are lucky. One of the best is Mana Pools in Zimbabwe. With its big herds of elephants, dappled woodland groves and glorious views across the Zambezi River, Mana Pools became a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1988 and is regarded by many as Africa’s most beautiful national park. Mana means “four” in the local Shona language (a reference to its four oxbow lakes) and is also renowned for walking safaris and canoe trips down the Zambezi.

We can create your perfect safari in Zimbabwe, including a stay at Chikwenya or Nyamatusi Camp in Mana Pools National Park, with its population of wild dogs.

The Maasai Mara and the Serengeti, Kenya and Tanzania

Welcome to the Serengeti, the world’s most famous national park, a wildlife stronghold the size of Holland renowned for the most spectacular concentration of animals on the planet as they chase across the plains in search of pastures new. Known simply as the Great Migration, the spectacle is shared by Kenya and Tanzania and happens every year when more than a million wildebeest, half a million gazelles and more than 200,000 zebras gather in December to give birth on their ancestral grazing grounds in the south of the park. Here they stay until April or May, but when the rains end the herds must move on, a living tide of animals preyed upon not only by the Serengeti lions but also by cheetahs, leopards and spotted hyenas as they head for their dry season refuge across the Kenyan border in the Maasai Mara, where they remain until the rains return at the year’s end.



Stay at Olonana Lodge, an A&K Sanctuary (in the Maasai Mara) and Kichakani Camp, an A&K Sanctuary (in the Serengeti) for the perfect Great Migration experience. Our A&K Exclusive Tented Camp can be set up anywhere, including the Maasai Mara. We can also create a Private Great Migration Safari with stays in both wildlife hotspots.

Where to See Meerkats

Makgadikgadi Pans, Botswana

Diminutive members of the mongoose tribe, meerkats are among the most fascinating of all African mammals. They live in close-knit social groups and those at Jack’s Camp, in the Makgadikgadi Pans of Botswana, have become habituated to human visitors. Many come to see them emerge from their burrows, churring and muttering as they stand on their hind legs, forepaws demurely folded on tummies, facing the sun with eyes peeled for the jackals and martial eagles that are their main predators.

Jack’s Camp, meanwhile, is an oasis of palm trees and unmatched luxury looking out across the glittering salt pans of Makgadikgadi National Park. “One day not far off,” says Ralph Bousfield, its enigmatic owner, “space will be the world’s greatest luxury, and here we still have space to share.”

It is easy to fall for the spell of Makgadikgadi. A few days there and you can feel its magic taking over, a kind of desert fever, like the beginning of a love affair. What better place to encounter up close the most loveable and endearing of small mammals.

Stay at Jack’s Camp as part of a bespoke safari in Botswana or combine it with San Camp – another recommended partner property in the Makgadikgadi Pans.

Where to See Aardvarks

Tswalu Private Reserve, South Africa

The Rainbow Nation’s most famous park is the Kruger, a vast wilderness the size of Israel, home to all the big cats and renowned for its giant tuskers. However, there are plenty of other options for game viewing. One of the most outstanding is Tswalu – the country’s biggest private reserve, set among the ochre dunes and camelthorn trees of the Kalahari in the North Cape Province, best-visited after the rains when the desert blooms. No wonder South Africa has been described as the world in one country.

Tswalu offers five-star luxury lodges and an enviable checklist of must-see mammals, including black rhinos, cheetahs and Kalahari lions. It is now acknowledged as the best place in Africa for spotting the smaller, rarer nocturnal animals so hard to find elsewhere, including caracals, brown hyenas, pangolins and aardvarks – once memorably described as “first word in the dictionary – last word in anteater design.”

We can arrange a family adventure in South Africa, staying at Tswalu The Motse and Tarkuni, in Tswalu Private Reserve – or tailor a bespoke journey specially for you, taking in this and other wildlife highlights of South Africa.