Lion Kenya

With the word ‘safari’ borrowed from Swahili, a language widely spoken across East Africa, it’s fitting that it conjures up images of African plains. But although it can describe any trip in search of animals in the wild, nowhere does quintessential safaris quite so well as Kenya. Its forests, savannahs and scrublands are home to the Big Five wildlife icons (those once considered the hardest to hunt: namely lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant and rhino) as well as a supporting cast stretching from antelope to zebra.

Perhaps Kenya’s most famous spectacle is the Great Migration, which has featured in countless documentaries. Wildebeest, zebra, gazelle and others are constantly on the move, looping their way across the Serengeti and Maasai Mara grasslands as they follow the seasonal rains that cause the sweet, fresh grass
to flourish. Their endless journeys take them across the fast- flowing Mara river, where they have to take their chances with the crocodiles lying in wait. Less terrifying are the likes of warthog, serval (a spotted cat) and jackal, plus impressive birds such as ostrich and the elegant crowned crane. Discover them all on game drives or take the experience that bit deeper on a hot air

balloon ride, horseback safari or thrilling bush walk – made more memorable still if accompanied by an indigenous Maasai guide.

But of all the creatures of the African bush, Kenya is particularly known for its lion, thanks to the lasting legacy of Born Free, the 1960 book (and later film) by Joy Adamson, who raised Elsa, an orphaned cub, as a pet before returning her to the wild. This real-life story unfolded in Meru National Park, a vast expanse of savannah and flat-topped acacia woodland. Today, it’s one of Kenya’s least visited national parks: a status that lends itself to more authentic wildlife viewing. Look out, in particular, for kudu, cheetah and giraffe; and bear in mind that any lion you meet could well be descended from Elsa herself.

Leopard South Africa

Despite their beautiful yellow-and-white fur and distinctive rosette patterning, leopard is by far the hardest of the Big Five to spot. As ambush hunters, these elusive cats blend masterfully into their habitat. The spots help to break up their silhouette, creating phenomenal camouflage, and generally nocturnal habits further add to their mystique. No wonder this is perhaps the most prized of all sightings. Their range once spread throughout Africa and across Asia Minor to Russia, but populations today are fragmented.

South Africa’s Kruger National Park is a particular stronghold, but even here sightings are not guaranteed. Success requires local know-how, skilled tracking and a fair bit of luck: so, for your best bet, choose a safari lodge in one of the private game reserves on the national park’s flank, where you’ll find some of the top guides in the business. Among these reserves, two names stick out: Thornybush and Sabi Sands. A long-running study in Sabi Sands

has documented the life stories of more than 900 leopards. Consequently, the animals – habituated to vehicles – show zero concern about being observed. Both here and at Thornybush, guides from neighbouring lodges communicate via radio, using local names (ingwe for leopard, ngala for lion) as a form of code. The result of this shared information is a much greater chance of glimpsing those gorgeous rosettes, not to mention other members of the Big Five and scores of other creatures, great and small.

Rhino Namibia

With its coppery sand dunes populated by desert-adapted animals such as ostrich, oryx, springbok, zebra, lion and giraffe, Namibia – and especially its Etosha National Park – is a top-of-the-range safari destination. As a source of salt licks and permanent water, Etosha draws impressive gatherings of animals in an ever-moving spectacle of spots, stripes and feathers. Among them, rhino (both black and white) is the star of the show. Indeed, Namibia is one the most important remaining havens for these awesome, enigmatic mammals, severely threatened due to demand for their horns in traditional medicines, primarily from Asian markets. Fortunately, anti-poaching units in Etosha and its surrounding reserves are having measurable success in keeping their rhino safe from harm.

A good place to spot them is Onguma Reserve, on Etosha’s eastern fringe, where guests can join rangers on research drives and data-capture exercises in the bush. Leopard, lion and elephant

can also be seen alongside at least 230 kinds of bird. With luck, you can get close enough to appreciate how white and black rhino differ: both in fact grey, the variance is in the shape of their mouths, with the white species adapted to grazing, the black to browsing the shrubbery. Elsewhere, Namibia is known for the Namib Desert’s sand-dune scenery, which is particularly epic around Sossusvlei. And, once the sun goes down, the constellations offer themselves in staggering detail, providing the most phenomenal star-gazing.

Elephant Tanzania

You can tell when a herd of elephants has passed through a patch of bushland. Broken branches, uprooted trees, shrubs flayed of their bark and leaves: the scene can almost look as if it’s been flattened by a bulldozer. Adding to the illusion are bare-earth furrows where the animals have dug for roots, using their tusks as shovels. Consequently, you don’t need to be an expert tracker to find them – which is just as well, as they can be surprisingly hard to spot in the open landscape.

Elephant populations have rebounded in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park after being heavily poached for their ivory in the Eighties and again in the 2010s. Although female elephants show a preference for mating with bulls bearing larger tusks, many populations nowadays have evolved to have smaller ivory embellishments as male ‘tuskers’ were the obvious target for poachers, resulting in those big-tusk genes being removed from the breeding pool. But a hint of an African elephant’s true magnificence can still be found in the Ngorongoro Crater, just to the south of the Serengeti, which has retained its massive tuskers. Zebra, rhino, various gazelles and an extremely high density of predators can also be found here – but with Ngorongoro being the world’s largest volcanic caldera, the steep-wall scenery here is an attraction in itself.

Lemur Madagascar

The lemur is a bit of an anomaly. As the world’s most ancient living primates, they descend from a far more ancient lineage than higher (or simian) primates: the group that includes apes, humans and monkeys. They once occurred on the African mainland, where competition with their simian cousins drove them to extinction. But those later-evolving apes and monkeys never made it to Madagascar, leaving this island stronghold as the lemur’s sole domain. So if seeing these unusual creatures in the wild is on your bucket list, Madagascar is the way to go.

The animals have existed here for some 70 million years. It’s thought that they first arrived on rafts of floating vegetation, whereupon they diversified and evolved to exploit the island’s varied habitats. Despite rampant deforestation, over 100 different species still survive, from the familiar ring-tailed lemur to the bizarre, nocturnal aye-aye. Others vary in size from the indri (the largest) down to the tiny Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur, which is the planet’s smallest primate. Among all this assortment, though, are one or two standout species – in particular, the bounding Verreaux’s sifaka, beautiful black-and-white ruffed lemur and the greater bamboo lemur, whose very secretiveness makes an encounter all the more thrilling.

Cheetah Botswana

Botswana is a land of superlatives and its biggest draw is the Okavango Delta. Rain falling in Angola’s highlands eventually finds its way via rivers and channels to Botswana, creating the world’s largest inland delta. It positively brims with life. This is where you may catch sight of the fastest land animal on earth, the cheetah, along with hyena, painted wolf and wetland specialists such as hippo, sacred ibis and magnificent African fish eagle.

And, if the Big Five is the holy grail of an African safari, Botswana ups the ante as the home of the Big Seven. The focus here is on ‘big’: there’s the African elephant (largest land mammal), lion (largest African cat), giraffe (tallest land animal), eland (largest antelope) and the baobab (largest tree), plus two with feathers: the ostrich (biggest bird) and the kori bustard (the world’s heaviest flying creature). Where better to encounter them than Mashatu Game Reserve, whose name translates as ‘Land of Giants’? Located where Botswana bumps into South Africa and Zimbabwe, the reserve straddles the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, creating diverse mix of habitats. There are grasslands, wetlands, riverine forests, rocky hills and sandstone ridges, all of which provide opportunities for wildlife to flourish. The Big Five are all here (with elephants in particular abundance), along with some of the most reliable big cat sightings in Africa.

Gorilla Rwanda

For up-close encounters, a jungle hike to meet the largest living apes is a unique experience. The mountain gorilla is found in only two places: Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and the cross- border Virunga Volcanoes, which are shared between Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And although Virunga is also home to chimpanzees and lowland gorillas, it’s their mountain-dwelling cousins that truly capture the imagination. They share the forest with creatures such as okapis, golden monkeys and three times the number of Britain’s bird species, but the thick vegetation doesn’t lend itself to wildlife-watching and once you’re deep in the forest, gorillas will be your only thought. Some gorilla families are habituated to sharing their habitat with groups of people, and Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park has ten habituated family groups, each led by at least one silverback accompanied by females and youngsters. It can take a couple of hours to locate them, and time spent in their company is limited to an hour, but with only eight visitors allowed per gorilla group on any one day, it’s an intimate and often euphoric, one-off adventure. Such exclusivity comes at a price – a gorilla-trekking permit costs around £1,200pp – but the income this generates has gone to good use. In the Eighties, there were fewer than 300 gorillas in Virunga, but now there are well over 600. Former poachers work as guides and porters; and communities at the park’s edge benefiting from tourism jobs have a stake in the gorillas’ survival.