Best way to safari? Luxury glamping with an expert guide
In addition to Uncharted Africa’s old-school mobile camping in Botswana, new kinds of safaris are on offer in Zimbabwe, Congo, Mozambique, Chad, Angola, Ethiopia and Kenya
Our safari guide looks like a luxurious version of Tarzan. The blue-eyed, tanned Ralph Bousfield walks up to our group of nine on the Xakanaxa airstrip in Botswana, where we’ve just arrived via vintage A2-San planes from all corners of the world.
He somehow manages to look equal parts exotic and stylishly debonair, with talisman bracelets on his right arm and a Rolex on his left. If this sounds too dreamy to be true, well, it should – Bousfield charges US$2,800 a day to take his esteemed clients on a one-of-a-kind mobile safari experience.
The new trend in the bush is going back to the classic, old-school style of safari. It’s all about high-end mobile camping in the wild with the finest safari guides.
“[This is] safari how it used to be, true safari in its purest form,” says Bousfield, who has made his name as one of the finest and most sought-after safari guides and Africa experts on the continent. He has been a guide to former United States president George W Bush, filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coenand one-time Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson.
Most travellers who go on safari stay in luxurious camps and lodges, fixed to one location. In the old days, going on safari meant travelling from faraway lands to Africa, and once there, journeying from one place to another, discovering and enjoying slow travel, setting up camps in different locations.
Our playground is the vast and endless Okavango Delta, one of the most diverse and rich safari destinations in Africa. In a quiet corner of the Moremi Game Reserve, a 5,000-square-kilometre wildlife park, we spend three nights mobile camping.
We start our trip by hopping into one of the two new Toyota Land Cruisers for the three-hour drive to the mobile tented camp.