Most of our guests tend to deploy 8 to 14 nights in Africa, of which anything from 3 to 9 nights are spent actually on safari in Botswana. 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.

8 to 14 nights

Longer trips of 15 to 21 nights tend to include 6 to 12 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.

15 to 21 nights

We absolutely love putting together trips of 22 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.

22 to 50 nights

Tanzania

Set on the East Coast of Africa, Tanzania is a truly remarkable place, the richest and most diverse safari country, with far more than its fair share of Africa’s crown jewels, including Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar.

This is the place to head if you are looking for a truly diverse African experience, usually an overland journey, with equal parts of epic wildlife, majestic volcanic scenery, authentic tribespeople, farms, villages and towns.

It’s also top of the list if you want to combine safari and tropical beaches.

In all honesty, Tanzania alone is worth several trips.

Trips from USD 4500

Kenya

Also on the East Coast of Africa, Kenya is the second most visited safari country on the continent, a place of great diversity, with popular reserves including the Maasai Mara, Amboseli, Tsavo and Samburu, as well as some much more remote wilderness areas and an extensive tropical coastline.

Unfortunately, the better known reserves in Kenya can get very busy in core areas, so we need to tread carefully to deliver a quality safari.

If you are looking towards the upper end of the budget range, then trips can be remote and fabulous. But if you are looking for value, you may be better off looking at Tanzania or countries further south. 

Trips from USD 5000

Botswana

Moving to the south of the continent, Botswana is widely considered to offer the highest quality safari in Africa.

The experience is not as diverse as Tanzania, but the remoteness and purity of the bush experience is unsurpassed.

If you are looking for either an easy vacation or a deeply immersive wilderness experience, this is the place. We just need to be careful about the very high prices during the Jun-Oct dry season.

Botswana is great in combination with Victoria Falls, the Cape or the tropical beaches of Mozambique.

Trips from USD 6000

Our safari experts have incredible 
first-hand knowledge and an average
of 12 years experience building great 
trips.

Expertise and experience

Since 1999, we have created over a million sample  trips and helped over 120,000 guests fall in love with  safari Africa.

A proud history

Over the years we have polished our operation to be super-reliable. Arranging your trip should be almost as much fun  as going on safari. 

Seamless and fun

Your trip should cost no more than if 
you had booked all the components directly. You effectively get our services for free.

Delivering value

Every single trip that we build is unique. Your trip will be precisely tailored to meet the exact requirements of everyone in your group.

Supremely tailor-made

The first safari company on the internet, we helped to shape the modern safari and we continue to be the prime innovators in our field.

Original innovators

Tell us your whatever you know about your ideal trip. Whether you're drawn to specific wildlife, particular regions, or have preferences about the style of accommodation, the more we understand, the better we can help you to craft the perfect experience.

Share your ideas

South Africa

South Africa is by far the most popular location for safari. It is a vast and incredibly diverse country, with far more highlights than could ever be included in a single trip.

The primary trip shape is a combination of safari in Kruger, with time in Cape Town, the Whale Coast and the Cape Winelands.

There is a huge choice of safari accommodation, right across the price spectrum, including some of the best lower cost options in Africa, so this is often the place to head on a lower budget.

However, South Africa is a much more developed country than those further north and the safari experience can feel significantly less pure and wild.

Trips from USD 3500

Zimbabwe

Also in the southern part of Africa, Zimbabwe is best known for the Victoria Falls, but also offers some of the most earthy, authentic, heart-pumping safari on the continent.

If you are looking for a short safari of 3-5 nights, then Hwange has some great value options.

Otherwise, Zimbabwe is a relatively high-priced location, which appeals most to experienced Africa travellers, who appreciate the extremely high levels of safari guiding.

The walking safari here can be truly extraordinary, with deliberate approaches onto elephants and lions. 

Trips from USD 4500

Zambia

Set in southcentral Africa, Zambia is a delightful backwater, also best known for the Victoria Falls, but with a handful of superb safari reserves.

The camps here have a reputation for intimacy, authenticity and a pleasantly homespun feel, many with a marked leaning towards walking safari, which is always a good sign.

Zambia is a mid-to-high price safari environment, which tends to appeal most to experienced safari travellers in search of new frontiers and first timers who are specifically looking for somewhere unusual for their safari. 

Trips from USD 5000

May to September is the main dry season in Botswana, with dry sunny conditions, peak flood in the first half and prolific wildlife viewing, but very elevated high season prices.

May to Sep

October is the hot end of the dry season, with epic wildlife, but high prices and very high temperatures, which can be significantly uncomfortable.

October

November to March is hot with occasional magnificent downpours, improving fast in the second half. Interesting wildlife and great prices, making Feb-Mar a very smart time to visit.

Nov-Mar 

April is a transition season, with conditions continuing to improve towards the dry season and flood arrival, with prices slightly lower than the upcoming dry season.

April

Your dedicated safari specialist will work with you to build a selection of sample trips. We'll discuss seasonality, wildlife movements, logistics, lodge options, activity levels, whatever is necessary. And we will keep on refining until we are all confident that we have reached the perfect trip.

Crafting your trip

Everything is arranged. All you need to do is turn up. You probably won’t even need to show your paperwork, you will simply glide from one group of friendly and efficient local hosts to the next. And our support team remains on hand throughout, leaving you free to focus entirely on the extraordinary experiences ahead.

Travel with confidence

Many of us here at ATR have travelled extensively with our own kids, so we know for a fact that safari is great for families.

This is the kind of trip that guarantees to generate memories that you will share for the rest of your lives.

However, there are significant health issues to consider in most safari areas, so we need to proceed with caution.

Most dry season safari is ideal for kids of 12 years and older, eminently feasible for kids 8-11 years and potentially viable from 6-7 years old. If your kids are 0-5 years, then it’s probably best to stick to the non-malarial areas of the Cape, then progressing up into Namibia as they get older.

Family safari 

Safari is an inherently romantic experience that can be endlessly tailored to suit you.

We have been helping guests to build awesome honeymoons for many years. We have intimate knowledge of some of the wildest and most romantic places in the world.

Perhaps the most important piece of advice is to be yourselves. Please don’t feel it is necessary to fit into the usual romantic tropes if they’re not for you. Just focus on having a great trip.

We very much understand the importance of these trips, we know that your honeymoon needs to really hit the heights and be a truly life-punctuating experience.

Honeymoon safari 

On safari, luxury means different things to different people.

The most conventional meaning is that the accommodations are extremely comfortable, with elevated levels of hospitality. This is relatively easy to deliver, there are lots of luxury lodges.

However, simply inserting more luxurious lodges into your trip is no guarantee of a better safari. In fact, the opposite can be true.

For us, the hallmarks of a truly high quality safari are a suitably slow pace, wonderful remote locations, superb safari guiding, exclusive and intense wildlife interaction, precisely tailored experiences and considered attention to detail. We can do that.

Luxury safari 

During the May-Oct dry season, Botswana is the most expensive safari location in Africa, with prices in the range USD 1000-5000 per person per night. However, during the Nov-Mar green season prices can drop as low as USD 500-750.

Twelve night trips can therefore range from around USD 5000 all the way up to and beyond 50,000 per person. 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, economies of scale cut in from around 4-6 guests).

Importantly, the quality of the core safari experience does not generally vary with price. The upper end of the price range is for the most polished and luxurious lodges, where the safari experience tends to be easier and more leisurely. Camps in the middle and lower range are mostly very comfortable, but the guests tend to be more focused on the wildlife.

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 during the Jan-Mar late green season and to carefully choose heavily discounted lodges. You can also reduce the number of core safari nights and deploy time in more cost-effective beach, town and rural locations (notably the Cape). 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, we can focus on fundamentally less pricey safari countries (South Africa or Namibia) and think about last-minute booking options, which can deliver some extraordinary discounts.

"We just returned from a weeks safari organized  organized   organized by ATR and have nothing but positive reviews!"

Okavango Delta

Set in the heart of the Kalahari Desert in the northwest of Botswana, the Okavango Delta is a stunningly beautiful and vibrant wetland, with intensely rich and varied wildlife, offering a very wide range of wet and dry safari activities.

Miraculously, the flood arrives from Angola during the long desert dry season, May to August, acting as a magnet for wildlife from a vast hinterland. However, the wildlife here in Okavango is very strong year round.

Guest accommodation in the Okavango is in around 50 mostly very high quality and famously pricey lodges.

Virtually all safaris to Botswana include at least a few nights in this area, with some trips focusing entirely on the delta.

Lodges USD 500-5000 pppn 

Linyanti Waterfront 

Set in the northwest of Botswana, the Linyanti Waterfront is one of the finest safari areas in Africa, renowned for huge herds of elephants, intense predator action and wild-dog denning.

The area enjoys a similar flood season as the Okavango Delta, centred on May to August, although it is more in the form of swollen rivers than a true wetland flood.

Guest accommodation is in a diverse range of around a dozen high quality camps and lodges across four private concession areas..

If you are combining two or more camps in Botswana, then one of them should probably be here, especially during the Jun-Oct dry season.

Lodges USD 800-5000 pppn 

Makgadikgadi

Set in the centre of Botswana, Makgadikgadi is a vast and hypnotic open grassland, centred on a network of epic salt pans and dotted with isolated islands of palm and baobab trees.

The area is renowned for hosting a vast zebra and wildebeest migration during the Nov-Feb green season, but is great to visit year round.

Guest accommodation is in a really interesting range of around a dozen camps, offering an unusually  wide range of safari activities, including habituated meerkats, Bushmen interaction, palaeontology and quad-biking.

If you intend to combine three or more camps in Botswana, then you should definitely consider including this amazing place.

Lodges USD 500-5000 pppn 

Central Kalahari 

Set in the heart of Botswana, Central Kalahari is a vast and arid national park, a great contrast to the water-world of the Okavango Delta, and renowned for unusual sightings like aardwolves, brown hyenas and huge black-mane lions.

Guest accommodation is in just a handful of lodges, only one of which, Tau Pan Camp, is set deep within the reserve.

This is a specialist safari area. The landscapes are hypnotically repetitive and the wildlife is naturally sparse. Furthermore, the park regulations do not permit walking safari, off-road driving or night vehicle safari, so the options are limited.

Central Kalahari only tends to feature in return visits to Botswana, or in very long combinations of four or more camps.

Lodges USD 500-2500 pppn 

Chobe

Set in the north of Botswana, Chobe is the heart of a vast conservation area, a very important national park, and with a long-established reputation for prodigious wildlife.

However, Chobe is also the location that hosts the majority of the overland traffic in Botswana, which means that it can get very busy and generally offers a much lower quality of wilderness experience compared with the famous private concessions of Okavango and Linyanti.

Guest accommodation is in around a dozen lodges, plus some very large campgrounds. These are supplemented by a swathe of accommodation in the town of Kasane, at the north end of the reserve.

We generally try to avoid the Chobe area, although it does occasionally feature in trips when guests want to return to specific areas that they visited many years ago.

Lodges USD 250-2500 pppn 

Tuli Block 

Set in the southeast of Botswana, Tuli Block is a very large private reserve which offers arguably the best non-malarial safari area in Africa.

The area contains a good range of landscapes, with rocky mountains, open hillsides and open savanna. The wildlife populations are rich, with particularly notable populations of lions, leopards and elephants.

Guest accommodation is in a handful of lodges, most of which offer an unusually wide range of activities, including walking safari, mountain hiking and hides.

The Tuli Block is totally separate from the other safari areas in Botswana, with which it is almost never combined. Far more likely that you travel in via Johannesburg and combine with locations across South Africa.

Lodges USD 400-3000 pppn 

Botswana is vast and wild, with over 40% of the land area under full conservation and the fifth lowest human population density in the world, an infinite wilderness where you can immerse yourself in the intoxicating majesty of Africa.

Pure safari

Incredibly, the wetlands of the Okavango Delta flood during the May-Aug early dry season, creating a spectacular explosion of life in the heart of the arid Kalahari Desert and drawing in huge numbers of animals from a vast hinterland.

Desert miracle

Over the decades, our lovely friends in Botswana have managed to take hospitality to extraordinary levels. The camps in Okavango have become incredibly stylish, comfortable and superbly hosted, yet retain the character of authentic and remote outposts.

Superb lodges

The purity of nature in Botswana enables the safari experience to become elevated to another plain. It is not enough to simply say that this is a hypnotic experience, it is subtle yet intoxicating, gentle yet powerful. It will literally reset your life.

Deep experience

A few days at the Victoria Falls can work really well at the front end of a Botswana safari, there’s some lovely lodges, the falls are impressive and there’s loads of other interesting activities in the area.

Victoria Falls 

Cape Town, the Cape Winelands and the Whale Coast all contain fabulous lodges and offer great value for money. Direct flights from Maun make this a very easy combo.

The Cape 

For fabulous tropical beaches, Mozambique offers a wide range of medium and high priced lodges. The only downside is that you will probably need an overnight in Johannesburg on the way.

Mozambique