Milestones
Defining Moments
The trips a family measures time by — before and after. A retirement, a remission, a fortieth anniversary, a year everyone got through.
View Details →Family Adventures
The years go quickly.
Spend some of them together.
A safari is one of the few holidays where a family is genuinely together — no separate screens, no separate rooms, everyone looking at the same thing at the same time.
Plan A Family Journey
Overview
Why a safari, and why now.
Children are only the age they are once.
Most family holidays are an exercise in parallel activity. Everyone is nominally on the same trip, and then the teenagers are on their phones, the youngest wants the pool, the grandparents want an early night, and the family is together in the same place without ever quite being together.
A safari is different for a structural reason: the good hours are fixed. Everybody gets up before light because that is when the animals move, and everybody is in the same vehicle looking at the same thing. There is no signal in most camps and very little to do between the two drives except talk to each other. Families who have not had a proper conversation in months find they have had four by Wednesday.
It works across ages in a way that few things do. A six-year-old and a seventy-year-old can both be entirely absorbed by the same lion. The child does not need to understand the conservation politics to be gripped, and the grandparent does not need the adrenaline to find it extraordinary.
Most of our family journeys are tailor-made, built around how many of you are travelling, what the ages are and what everybody actually wants out of the week. A family of four with young children needs a different route, different driving distances and a different daily rhythm from three generations travelling together, and we would rather build two different journeys than sell the same one twice.
The practical things that decide whether it works
The difference between a family safari that lands and one that does not is rarely the wildlife. It is whether the driving days are short enough, whether the rooms connect, whether there is a pool for the middle of the day, and whether the guide can talk to a nine-year-old without talking down to them.
Those are the things we plan around first. The lodges come second, and the itinerary is shaped by the youngest and the oldest person travelling rather than the average of the group.
Built Around Your Numbers
A family of four, or fourteen across three generations — the route, the vehicles and the rooms are sized to the group rather than the other way round.
Shorter Driving Days
We break long transfers, or fly them, so nobody spends six hours in a vehicle with a tired child.
Guides Who Are Good With Children
Requested by name. A guide who can hold a child’s attention changes the entire week.
Malaria-Free Where It Matters
For families with young children we can build the whole journey in malaria-free reserves.
The Trip, Photographed
On road journeys your guide carries a camera, so you are in the pictures rather than behind them.
Room To Do Nothing
Unstructured afternoons are planned in deliberately. A full itinerary is not the same as a good one.
Travel Themes
Five reasons families come to us.
Every one of these is tailor-made around your family. The themes are a starting point for the conversation rather than fixed packages — tell us which one fits and we will build from there.
Celebration
Graduation
The gap between finishing and starting. A trip that marks the end of one thing before the next one takes over.
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Celebration
Birthday
A significant birthday spent somewhere that makes the number irrelevant.
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Once In A Lifetime
Bucket List
The one that has been on the list for twenty years. Gorillas, the migration, the Okavango in flood.
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Together
Family Vacation
No occasion at all. Just the family, away, for as long as you can manage.
View Details →All family journeys are quoted per family rather than per departure, and are shaped around the number travelling, the ages, the dates and the pace you want. Nothing here is a fixed itinerary.
Family Lodges
Camps that genuinely take families.
Not every excellent lodge is a good one for children. These are the ones we return to — for family suites, interconnecting rooms, guides who are good with young travellers, and enough space that a restless afternoon is somebody’s problem to solve rather than everybody’s.
Family Packages
Every journey we publish for families.
These are the published routes carrying our Family Safari designation, plus two more built expressly for families. Each can be taken as it stands or rebuilt around your own numbers, ages and dates.
Prices shown are guide figures per person sharing at the time of writing, and vary with season, party size and room configuration. Most Family Safari departures carry a minimum of four travellers, and children’s rates apply at most properties. Tell us who is travelling and we will quote your family properly.
Start The Conversation
How a family journey gets built.
It starts with a conversation rather than a brochure. The more you tell us about who is travelling, the less of your time we waste on routes that were never going to suit.
01
Tell us who is coming
Ages, numbers and any mobility or dietary considerations. This shapes more of the journey than the destination does.
02
Tell us the occasion
A milestone changes what we plan for. If there is no occasion, that is useful to know too.
03
We build two options
Usually a shorter and a longer version, so you can see what the extra days actually buy.
04
You change it
Nothing is fixed until you say so. Most families move something, and that is the point of building it this way.
Everyone in the same vehicle, looking at the same thing.
Tell us who is travelling and roughly when, and we will build something around the people rather than the destination.