Most of What People Think About Safari Is Wrong

Most travelers picture safari as a single experience: a guided vehicle in a famous park during peak season, staying at a lodge that costs more per night than the flight to get there. That version of safari is real, and when it is done well it is extraordinary. It is also one version among many, and for most people it is the only one they have heard of.

Walking safaris put you on foot in the bush with an armed guide, moving through landscapes at a pace that reveals things a vehicle never would. Primate tracking is the walking safari in its most focused form: mountain gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda, and the DRC, chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Mahale Mountains, or orangutans in Borneo, each built around going into dense forest with local trackers who know where the animals are.

The variations go further. River safaris by boat open up floodplain ecosystems where vehicle access is impossible, and in some parks, scenic flights change the perspective entirely. Self-drive is another option across national parks in southern Africa: you rent a vehicle, enter the park, and set your own pace. These are fundamentally different experiences from a guided game drive, and you can combine several on a single trip.

Seasonality is the other assumption worth questioning. Peak season at the most popular parks means more vehicles, longer waits at sighting areas, and lodges at full capacity. Green season — the months most travelers avoid — brings different landscapes, newborn wildlife, migratory birds, and parks operating with far fewer visitors. The operators who run lodges and guided safaris in these destinations operate year-round because every season offers something worth seeing, and going in the shoulder or low season helps their local businesses.

The map of where safari is exceptional extends far beyond the parks that show up first in a search. Across southern and East Africa alone, there are dozens of national parks, private conservancies, and community reserves operating well below visitor capacity with professional guides and ecosystems as rich as anything in the famous parks. Several of them are managed by organizations like African Parks, whose work is reopening landscapes that were previously inaccessible to conservation tourism, and many others are run by private owners and families who have devoted their working lives to a single stretch of land.

Where Birding Takes You

A serious birder will spend a week in a single forest reserve to find an endemic species and will plan a trip around a migration window measured in days. That kind of travel requires extended time in one location and the knowledge of local guides who know which ridge the shoebill nests on and which fruiting tree is drawing turacos this week.

Birding also changes the geography entirely. The destinations that matter most for birding are often not the destinations that dominate safari marketing, and some of the best birding on earth happens outside Africa altogether — in cloud forests, lowland rainforest, and transition zones between ecosystems where species density is highest. For travelers whose wildlife travel starts with a field checklist, the destination list looks very different from the standard safari circuit.

Scott Monaco works with guides and operators who specialize in both safari and birding across the destinations where this kind of travel is most productive.

Stories from Scott Monaco

The Scott Monaco Guide to Rwanda covers the full country — Kigali, Volcanoes National Park, Akagera, Nyungwe Forest, Lake Kivu — with restaurants, practical logistics, and the kind of detail that comes from living there.

In The Elephant in the Headlights, Scott Monaco takes a rental car into Akagera National Park in Rwanda for a self-drive safari that goes wrong in every possible way.

The Safari Big Five is a field guide to the five species you actually encounter on a game drive — from the photographer whose camera weighs more than a toddler to four others you will recognize immediately.

A Few Places Where Safari and Birding Are Worth Building a Trip Around

Mountain gorilla tracking in Rwanda, Uganda, and the DRC — Walking on foot into dense volcanic forest with trackers who have spent years with specific gorilla families, in Volcanoes National Park, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, or Virunga National Park.

Arusha National Park, Tanzania — Walking safaris, canoeing on the Momella Lakes, and a park sitting between Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru that most northern circuit itineraries drive past on the way to the Serengeti.

Liwonde National Park, Malawi — Managed by African Parks, with river safaris along the Shire River and walking safaris through floodplains that carry a fraction of the visitor traffic of the better-known reserves.

Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe — One of Africa’s largest reserves, with enormous elephant herds and a network of waterholes that concentrate wildlife across both dry and green seasons.

Iona National Park, Angola — A vast coastal desert landscape with endemic wildlife, reopening to conservation tourism for the first time.

Nyungwe Forest, Rwanda — Chimpanzee tracking and over 300 bird species in a montane rainforest that most visitors to Rwanda never reach.

Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary, Senegal — One of the most important wetland birding sites in the world, with millions of migratory birds arriving between November and April.

Birding Ecuador’s eastern Andes and Morona Santiago — Over 1,600 species nationally, with the cloud forests and Amazonian transition zones of the eastern slope producing some of the highest species counts per hour anywhere on earth.

Lowland rainforest birding in Borneo, Malaysia — Danum Valley and the Kinabatangan River offer hornbills, pittas, and broadbills in primary rainforest that serious birders build entire trips around.

Birding Colombia’s western Andes — The Chocó and western slope hold concentrations of hummingbirds, tanagers, and antpittas in cloud forests accessible from Cali and the coffee region.

Where to Go Next

New stories from Scott Monaco are published weekly.

If safari or birding is driving your next trip, tell Scott Monaco what you want to see and where you are considering.

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