Luxury

If you are looking for a luxurious high-quality bush experience, then there are options in all countries, but most notably in Botswana, Tanzania, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

           Earthy

For a more earthy and intimate experience, with a greater focus on high quality guiding and walking safari, there are good options in Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

          Overland  

For private-guided overland safaris, which offer a broader African experience, but which are slightly more arduous, the Serengeti region of Tanzania is the place.

          Lower cost 

If you need to find the best lower cost options, then you should probably start in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

            Self-drive

For self-drive safari options, Namibia is the stand-out country, with further options in South Africa.

          Primates

If you are interested in gorillas and chimps, then you need to lookk at Rwanda, Uganda and Congo.

            8 to 14 nights 

Most of our guests tend to deploy 8 to 14 nights in Africa, of which anything from 3 to 13 nights are spend actually on safari. Combining with other locations like tropical beaches, rural areas, Victoria Falls and Cape Town can add variety into a trip and help to keep a lid on costs.

           12 to 21 nights  

Longer trips of 12 to 21 nights tend to include 9-20 nights on safari, usually split across two to five different areas, sometimes in two or more countries. Longer explorations of non-safari areas such as the Western Cape (Cape Town, Whale Coast, Cape Winelands) also become possible and are incredibly good value.

             21 to 50 nights 

We absolutely love putting together even trips of 21 to 50 nights, or even longer. Sometimes we are lucky enough to work with guests who are taking a sabbatical from work or who are retired and just love to travel. In these trips, the possibilities become almost infinite and can include a half dozen or more countries.

African safari tours range from relatively pricey to eye-wateringly expensive. For the core safari nights in a trip, you can expect to spend USD 500 to 3500 per person per night.

We are more than happy to work across this range of prices. The only important thing is that we help you find the very best safari to suit your budget.

The two dominant price factors are the specific lodges that you choose to include in your trip and how many people you are bringing (solo safari can be impractically expensive, whilst the economies of scale are usually reached at around 4-6 guests).

If you have a higher budget, we will help you determine which camps do actually deliver elevated levels of service and experience. We will also highlight other subtle ways in which your trip can be raised to another level, including the use of whole camp bookings, private guides and vehicles, helicopter explorations of remote areas etc.

If you have a medium budget, the best ways to keep a lid on costs are to travel out of the Jul-Oct dry season and to carefully choose lower-priced lodges.  You can also reduce the number of core safari nights and deploy time in more cost-effective beach, town and rural locations. We will help you understand where to trim and where to splash in order to achieve the best overall experience.

If you have a lower budget, then talk to us about last-minute booking options, which can deliver some extraordinary discounts. Failing that, we can always look at other fundamentally less pricey safari countries.

How much to spend in Africa

Tropical beaches

If you want to include tropical beaches with your safari, the most convenient locations are Kenya, Tanzania and the Kruger area of South Africa. Other safari areas and more remote Indian Ocean islands can be combined, but the connections are more sticky.

Primate areas

If you also want to go trekking in the tropical forests in search of gorillas and chimpanzees, then you need to head to Rwanda or Uganda, which combine most easily with the Serengeti region of Tanzania for savanna safari.

Rural locations

Some safari locations are located near attractive rural areas, where stylish lodges offer a chance to relax and undertake a whole other range of more culturally-focused activities. The Serengeti region of Tanzania is particularly strong in this respect.

Africa has around 2300 safari lodges.

We are able to include any of these properties in your trip. We ones most like to recommend fall into two categories …

Firstly, there are the truly high-end lodges, which are in the very best locations and offer the highest levels of guiding, hospitality and consistency, suitable for demanding guests.

Secondly, there are the relatively good value camps, which are also in excellent locations and also take their guiding very seriously, but which typically offer lower levels of luxury and have the potential to be slightly less consistent in their delivery, suitable for more easy-going guests.

The properties that we generally prefer to avoid in Africa are the large sausage-factory-type places, which deliver nasty low-quality safari experiences to guests who appear to be on a very different agenda. We also need to avoid very simple lodges, where the experience can be too unreliable for us to recommend.

You can always expect absolute honesty from us when describing the various lodges and camps. Our primary motivation is to figure out which ones will suit you the best.

The best safari lodges in Africa

When to go on safari in Africa

The various safari  areas of Africa are not only very seasonal, but even in the same month conditions can vary enormously from place to place. Careful planning is extremely important. The high level view goes something like this …

May-Sep is the main dry season in most safari locations, with dry and sunny conditions, prolific wildlife viewing, high season prices and relatively high visitor traffic.

Oct-Nov is a transition period in most areas, with mixed weather conditions, slightly reduced wildlife sightings, reduced prices and relatively low visitor traffic.

Dec-Jan is usually good in most of East Africa, but hot and rainy in much of Southern Africa, with high season prices and high visitor traffic for the middle two weeks.

Feb-Apr is generally rainy and adverse, but with major exceptions including the migration calving season in the Serengeti area of Tanzania and great low season prices in Botswana. Visitor traffic is generally quite low.

Expert

Our safari experts are uncommonly knowledgeable and experienced

765,000

The number of superb safaris we have  so far created

Seamless

Arranging your trip should be almost as much fun as actually going on safari  

Value

Your trip should cost you no more than if you booked all the components directly

Tailored

Your trip will be perfectly tuned to meet your requirements

What our guests say

“We’ve used many different travel organizers and agents, but one truly stands like a giraffe, head and shoulders above all others.”

Linda Goddard  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 

“ATR are the experts in their field and I wouldn’t trust anyone else.”

Tara Stewart  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 

“ATR are honest in their appraisal of individual lodges. You can trust their judgement.”

Graeme Gales  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

4.9   ★ ★ ★ ★ ★  

Average Google Review Score

1999

The year that we started to build great safaris

           True wilderness

Some safari areas are enormous wildernesses, whilst others are small fenced reserves. You will have to decide for yourself how important that is to your enjoyment.

           Private or public

Many of the best safari areas in Africa are private conservancies, where visitor numbers are very low and there should be no risk of vehicle traffic.

           Seasonality

It is critical that a safari be perfectly tuned to the seasonal patterns of weather, wildlife and visitor traffic. You can rely on us to be particularly obsessive about this issue.

           Small lodges 

Most of the very best safari lodges have less than ten rooms, some less than five. When a lodge exceeds twenty rooms, alarm bells should really start to sound.

           Safari guiding

The quality of the safari guiding is critical your trip. A bad guide can drive past all the animals, a great guide can make an empty landscape entertaining. 

          Ethos

The best safari operations are run by people who have dedicated their lives to conservation. If an operation feels to commercial, then you’ve taken a wrong turn. 

Honeymoon safaris

There is no better and no more romantic honeymoon than a safari honeymoon.

We have been helping guests to build awesome honeymoons for many years. We very much understand the importance of such a trip. We know that it needs to really reach the heights and to be a truly life-punctuating experience.

Family safaris

An African safari should be one of the most wonderful things that your family will ever do, on so many levels. The deep sense of adventure, coupled with a wide range of unforgettable experiences, enriches the memory bank like no other type of trip.

Our experts have a great deal of experience of creating truly remarkable family safaris for a very wide range of tastes and budgets.

Luxury safaris

If your dream safari involves beautifully designed lodges, wonderful food and elegant service, then there’s a very wide range of lodges in Africa from which to choose.

Usually, higher levels of luxury also imply higher prices, but this is not necessarily the case. There are some very well-priced options in parts of South Africa in particular.

Adventure safaris

If you are more focused on the intensity of the experience, then that’s no problem. We can dial up the heat on a safari as high as you wish. Most commonly this means simpler stripped-down camps and raw experiences such as approaching lions and elephants on foot.

Some of our safari experts are particularly experienced in this kind of thing. They delight in putting together trips that go far beyond the usual envelope.

Victoria Falls

The Victoria Falls are very conveniently combined with the safari areas of Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe.  There are even direct flight connections with the Kruger area of South Africa.

Cape Town

Cape Town, the Whale Coast and the Cape Winelands are extremely beautiful and ridiculously good value. Adding them to a safari can really help keep a lid on the total cost of a trip.

Madagascar

Madagascar is a vast place that really needs a bare minimum of ten nights to even scrape the surface. It therefore tends to be combined with safari on the mainland in trips of three or more weeks.