The Safari advice I give my friends & family before they visit East Africa

Every year, usually around the start of migration season, my phone rings. A friend of a friend. A colleague. Someone's aunt in London. Someone's honeymooning cousin from the US. They're planning their first safari. The questions are always wonderfully earnest.

"Should I buy a bigger camera lens?"

"Is four nights enough?"

"What are my chances of seeing a leopard?"

And every time, I find myself smiling. Because I recognise that excitement. That anticipation. The feeling that something extraordinary lies ahead, just beyond the horizon. What I rarely tell them is that the things they are worrying about beforehand are almost never the things they remember afterwards.

Years later, nobody talks about the number of lions they saw. Nobody remembers whether they packed the perfect lens. Nobody remembers the exact species list. What they remember are moments. Tiny moments. Unexpected moments. Moments that somehow become larger with time. The safari advice I give my friends is this:

Look beyond the Big 5

I know. Heresy. The Big Five have become safari's most famous celebrities. Lion. Leopard. Elephant. Buffalo. Rhino. Guests often arrive carrying an invisible checklist, eager to tick them off one by one. But one of the most memorable moments I have ever witnessed on safari involved none of them. A few years ago, I was guiding a family through northern Kenya. Like many families travelling together, they arrived carrying more than suitcase baggage. There were the familiar dynamics that seem to follow many of us from home. Parents trying to engage their children. Siblings drifting into their own worlds. One teenage son whose attention seemed permanently fixed on a phone game. Everyone still felt slightly separate from one another.

The morning of our first safari, we stopped beside a termite mound. A small family of dwarf mongooses emerged from the entrance one by one, warming themselves in the first rays of sunlight. Nothing dramatic. Nothing rare. No predator. No chase. No fanfare. Just a tiny family beginning its day. One mongoose climbed onto a rock to stand watch while the others foraged. The little girl in the back leaned forward.

"Why does that one keep looking around?"

I explained the role of a sentry.

Then came another question.

"Does it take turns?"

Then another.

"Are they brothers and sisters?"

Before long, the questions were coming from every corner of the vehicle. The teenage son had quietly put down his game. His sister was pointing things out before anyone else noticed them. Mum was laughing. Dad was completely absorbed. Nobody reached for a phone. Nobody asked where the lions were. Nobody wanted to leave.

What stays with me all these years later is not the mongooses. It's the family. As they watched those tiny creatures interact, something shifted. They stopped observing separately and began wondering together. They became curious together. They laughed together. For half an hour, the noise of everyday life seemed to fall away. There was no agenda. No notifications. No competing distractions. Just a family sharing a moment of genuine wonder. And perhaps that is what safari does at its best. It reconnects us. Not only to the natural world, but to each other.

In a world increasingly designed to fragment our attention, there is something profoundly moving about watching a family become completely present in the same moment.

Years later, I doubt they remember how many lions they saw. But I suspect they remember those mongooses. Because what they really remember is how they felt. Together. Curious. Connected. Filled with awe.

The bush rewards curiosity far more generously than ambition. The guests who leave most fulfilled are rarely those who saw the most animals. They are usually the ones who discovered that the greatest gift of safari isn't a checklist. It's presence.

Learn to lean into patience and presence

A magnificent Samburu cheetah with her impala kill

Modern life has made us uncomfortable with stillness. We fill silence immediately. Refresh screens. Check messages. Move on to the next thing. The wilderness operates on entirely different terms. I remember a guest once apologising to me after a quiet morning drive.

"We didn't see much," she said. We had seen giraffes, elephants, zebra, warthogs and a martial eagle. But compared to the previous day's leopard sighting, it felt uneventful. An hour later, while returning to camp, an impala gave a sharp alarm call in the thick brush. Then another. Then silence. The kind of silence that feels different. Every guide knows it. We waited. And out of a patch of long grass emerged a cheetah carrying a young impala. The entire sighting lasted perhaps thirty seconds.

The bush teaches patience. Sometimes nothing is happening. Sometimes everything is happening and you simply haven't noticed it yet.

Your Guide matters more than you think

People often spend months researching camps. Comparing tents. Comparing pools.

Comparing thread counts. Almost nobody asks enough questions about their guide.

And yet, if you ask me what transforms a safari from good to unforgettable, the answer is almost always the person sitting in the front seat. Some of the most memorable moments in the bush are not simply a product of being in the right place, but of seeing that place through the eyes of someone who knows it intimately. Having spent my life in East Africa, I have learnt that every landscape holds layers. What may appear to be an empty plain can be alive with stories: fresh tracks in the dust, a flutter of migrating White Pilgrim butterflies, a unique medicinal plant, alarm calls drifting from a thicket, the subtle clues that reveal what's unfolding and what may happen next. The difference between seeing wildlife and truly experiencing the bush often lies in understanding these hidden connections.

A good guide does more than find animals. They help bring a landscape to life, revealing the relationships, behaviours and stories that most people would otherwise pass straight by.

Stay longer

Two Secretary Birds, one bush, zero paperwork, Borana Conservancy

This is perhaps the simplest safari advice I give.

Stay longer. Almost every first-time itinerary I see tries to accomplish too much. Three parks. Four flights. Five lodges. Eight nights. The result often feels like speed dating with Africa. You meet incredible places but never truly get to know them. The most rewarding safaris are often the opposite. Fewer destinations. More time. More depth. I remember a family who spent five nights in one conservancy rather than moving every two days. By day three, they recognised resident secretary birds. By day four, they recognised individual elephants. By day five, they were invested in the unfolding stories of the landscape around them. The bush had stopped being a destination. It had become familiar. That is where the magic begins.

Luxury is not what most people think

One of the most common mistakes I see first-time safari travellers make is choosing a safari the way they might choose a beach holiday: by comparing rooms, pools and photographs of the property. Of course, comfort matters. But in Africa, the location matters infinitely more. A beautiful camp in an average wildlife area will never compare to a simple camp in an extraordinary one. The finest safari experiences are shaped by what lies beyond your tent: the quality and ethos of the conservancy, the landscape, the wildlife, the guiding, and the sense of exclusivity that comes from being immersed in a truly wild place.

Some of the most memorable mornings of my life have begun long before breakfast, watching lions emerge from the darkness, following fresh leopard tracks through the dust, or sitting quietly as elephants crossed a river in the first light of dawn. None of those moments had anything to do with thread counts or infinity pools.

When planning a safari, ask less about the room and more about what happens beyond it. The right location can transform a trip from something great into something unforgettable.

One final thought

Even now, after a lifetime in these landscapes, there are mornings when I stop the vehicle, look across a valley, and feel the same sense of wonder I did as a child. That feeling is why people return. Not for the Big Five. Not for the photographs. Not even for the wildlife. They return because, for a brief moment, life becomes wonderfully simple. You wake with the sun. You pay attention. You notice. And in a world increasingly designed to distract us, that may be the greatest luxury of all.