The lands travelled

1. I.

   Kenya

   The Maasai, the highlands, the golden light of the Mara

   

   Kenya begins with its light — golden, clear, the like of which I have found nowhere else. But no country comes down to its landscapes alone. What holds me here is the people: the Maasai of the Mara plains, some of whose guides I have known for fifteen years, and the Samburu further north, their pastoral cousins in ochre and beadwork. Their bond with cattle, land and the spoken word gives the journey a depth that wildlife on its own could never carry.

   On the coast, Kenya turns Swahili: an ancient civilisation born of Indian Ocean trade, blending Africa, Arabia and India in its language, its cooking and its coral architecture. In the highlands it is the tea and coffee estates that shape the land, the busy markets, and Nairobi — a restless, creative city where the country looks ahead.

   I work with two tented camps — no concrete, no buffet, fires in the evening and enamel kettles. We set out at dawn, return before the heat, and head out again in the late afternoon for the descending light, often with a Maasai guide who names every grass and every track.

   The great migration crosses the Mara River between late July and early October, yet the Mara stays extraordinary out of season — less frequented, more peaceful. It can open out towards Lake Nakuru or the highlands of Laikipia, always leaving time for the encounter.

   Recommended season —

   July to October

   Average duration —

   8 to 12 days

   Write to me about Kenya →

2. II.

   Tanzania

   Swahili and Maasai peoples, baobabs, the light of Out of Africa

   

   Tanzania is the country closest to my heart, and not for its parks alone. It is a land of peoples: the Maasai herders of the open plains, and the Hadza of the shores of Lake Eyasi — one of the last hunter-gatherer peoples on the continent, whose click language reaches back into very ancient time. A morning walking with them changes the way you look at the bush ever after.

   Along the coast and inland shines Swahili culture, born of Indian Ocean trade: its language, its spice-scented cooking, taarab music with its Arab inflections, and Makonde carving — those ebony figures all in interlacing lines. This is a country that tells itself as much through its markets and workshops as through its horizons.

   As for the wild, I work it across chosen parks: the Rufiji River of Nyerere National Park (formerly Selous), which you go down by boat at sunset, ten metres from the hippos; the baobabs and red earth of Ruaha, raw and silent; and the luminous gentleness of Mikumi, accessible, which I often suggest as a first or last stage. Few vehicles, long approaches, and time.

   I do not systematically offer the classic Serengeti and Ngorongoro — I know them, but prefer to leave them to those whose trade it is to manage the crowds. On request, we can talk it over.

   Recommended season —

   June to October

   Average duration —

   10 to 15 days

   Write to me about Tanzania →

3. III.

   Uganda

   The Kingdom of Buganda, the great forests, the source of the Nile

   

   Uganda tells its story first through its people. Around Kampala lives the Baganda people, heart of the ancient Kingdom of Buganda, one of East Africa's oldest monarchies, still alive in its ceremonies, its drums and the Luganda language. The capital's markets overflow with matoke, dried fish and printed cloth; music is everywhere, from church choirs to the rhythms of the street.

   Further west, at the edge of the great forests, one meets the Batwa, a forest people displaced from their land when the parks were created, who still pass on their knowledge — plants, songs, the memory of place. Walking towards Bwindi or Kibale, to meet the gorillas and the chimpanzees, also means crossing these highland communities, their terraced fields, their hospitality.

   The country carries, too, a geography heavy with history: at Jinja one stands at the source of the Nile, the thread that ties Uganda to the whole valley. Between Lake Victoria and the volcanoes of the west, daily life unfolds unhurried and generous.

   That is what I try to show: not only the great apes, but an inhabited country — its kingdoms, its markets, its shared forests. In a small group, at the pace of its people, with respect for the places and for those who live in them.

   Recommended season —

   June to September — January to February

   Average duration —

   8 to 12 days

   Write to me about Uganda →

4. IV.

   Malawi

   The lake, the fishermen, the warm heart of Africa

   

   Malawi is known as the warm heart of Africa, and the phrase is well earned: what strikes you here, before the landscapes, is the welcome of its people. The country lives largely to the rhythm of its lake, a vast inland sea ringed with fishing villages.

   At dawn the dugout canoes come in, laden with chambo and usipa, the small fish then left to dry on the beaches. Life is organised here, between water and shore: markets, singing, drums. Music holds a central place — festive rhythms, community dances — as does craft: basketry, wood carving, the pottery traded on the stalls.

   Malawi's peoples — Chewa, Yao, Tumbuka and others — each have their own traditions, languages and ceremonies, yet share the same quiet hospitality that made the country's name. Conversation comes easily here, and an invitation soon follows.

   That is why I often suggest Malawi as a pause or a closing note to a journey: less to tick off animals — though Liwonde offers fine moments along the Shire River — than to experience an inhabited, unhurried Africa, where one takes the time to meet people, in a small group and without rushing anything.

   Recommended season —

   May to October

   Average duration —

   8 to 12 days

   Write to me about Malawi →

5. V.

   Ethiopia

   High plateaux, rock-hewn churches, the roots of the continent

   

   Ethiopia is a country that thinks in centuries. It is called the cradle of humankind, and the high plateaux hold that sense of great age everywhere: in Orthodox Christianity, among the oldest in the world; in the churches carved from the rock at Lalibela; in the monasteries set on the islands of Lake Tana. The kingdom of Aksum left its stelae here and the memory of one of the first Christian states.

   The country has kept its own time. It follows a distinct calendar, written in the Ge'ez script, and lives to the rhythm of religious festivals that gather crowds dressed in white. The coffee ceremony — beans roasted before you, incense, three successive servings — says on its own all there is to know of the Ethiopian sense of welcome and of slowness.

   At the table, injera, the tangy flatbread shared by hand, brings guests together around a single platter. Further south, the Omo Valley is home to a mosaic of peoples whose living traditions are among the most singular on the continent.

   I offer Ethiopia to those who seek depth rather than wildlife: an Africa of faith, of writing and of memory — travelled in a small group, with all the time it deserves. As for nature, the Bale Mountains shelter the Ethiopian wolf, amid highland landscapes that recall the Andes more than the savannah.

   Recommended season —

   October to March

   Average duration —

   10 to 15 days

   Write to me about Ethiopia →

6. VI.

   Zimbabwe

   Great Zimbabwe, the Shona and Ndebele peoples, the school of the trackers

   

   The country's very name comes from stone. Great Zimbabwe, a medieval city raised without mortar by the ancestors of the Shona people, still lifts its curving walls at the heart of the plateau: the capital of a trading kingdom that sent gold and ivory as far as the shores of the Indian Ocean. You walk it slowly, between enclosures of fitted granite that have stood for centuries. That, I believe, is where any journey through Zimbabwe truly begins.

   The country tells itself through its peoples — the Shona, in the majority, and the Ndebele of the west, heirs to a distinct history. Shona stone sculpture, admired well beyond the continent, turns serpentine and verdite into pared-down forms; you come upon the workshops at the roadside, dust underfoot, chisel in hand. And there is the mbira, that thumb piano with its metal tines, whose insistent patterns have long accompanied ceremony and the memory of the ancestors.

   In the markets, in the villages, in the language that rolls from one greeting to the next, you sense a quiet hospitality, without display. It is this human ground that gives the rest its meaning.

   Then comes the school of the trackers. At Mana Pools, on the banks of the Zambezi, you approach elephants on foot, at a respectful distance, in a silence that becomes a discipline. Hwange, farther west, opens onto drier landscapes and very large herds. The country asks a little logistical commitment, but returns it a hundredfold.

   Recommended season —

   May to October

   Average duration —

   8 to 12 days

   Write to me about Zimbabwe →

7. VII.

   Zambia

   Luangwa, the walk, the peoples of the river

   

   Zambia is a country of walking and of many peoples. Dozens of languages are spoken here, and behind each one a world: the Bemba of the north, the Tonga of the valley, the Lozi of the Zambezi floodplain, whose king leads the Kuomboka each year — that procession of royal barges when the waters rise and the plain must be left for higher ground. Few ceremonies speak so plainly of the bond between a people and their river.

   Around the Luangwa, village life still sets the pace of the days: markets of cassava and groundnut, drums at dusk, a sense of welcome that cannot be ordered up. Zambia also carries an industrial history — the copper of the Copperbelt, which built its towns and much of its fate — and a quiet pride in having won its independence without war.

   South Luangwa invented the modern walking safari. You set out on foot at first light, with a tracker and a guide who reads the ground like a page, and you soon understand that the knowledge comes from here, from people born among these grasses.

   I like to come at the end of the dry season, when the heat draws the rhythms tighter and life — animals and people alike — closes in around the water.

   Recommended season —

   June to October

   Average duration —

   8 to 12 days

   Write to me about Zambia →

8. VIII.

   Botswana

   Okavango, the Kalahari, water and desert peoples

   

   Botswana is a country of water and patience. The Okavango Delta floods just as the rest of the subcontinent dries out, and you travel it by mokoro, the poled canoe, through a silence in which you can hear the water sliding between the papyrus. Yet what stays with me first is the people: the Batswana, whose lives long turned around cattle — wealth, bride-price, the memory of a family — and the kgotla, the village assembly where people speak until a decision emerges.

   To the south and west, the Kalahari remains the land of the San, desert peoples whose knowledge — reading a track, finding water beneath the sand, naming every plant — commands respect. There is nothing quaint in this: an intelligence of place, handed down across generations.

   Botswana also chose, very early, to entrust part of its conservation to its communities. Many of the delta's concessions are managed together with the neighbouring villages, and that changes everything: you are not the spectator of a nature without inhabitants, but the guest of a lived-in land.

   In the evening, around the fire, you share a seswaa of slowly simmered meat and listen to a language made of clicks and courtesy. It is a sober, dignified country that performs for no one — and that is why I keep coming back.

   Recommended season —

   May to October

   Average duration —

   10 to 14 days

   Write to me about Botswana →

9. IX.

   Namibia

   Etosha, the Namib, its peoples and the light

   

   Namibia is a country of air, of mineral, and of herding peoples. In the Kaokoland, in the north-west, live the Himba, whose women coat their skin and hair with otjize, a blend of ochre and butterfat that shields them from the sun and speaks of who they belong to. A little further south, the Herero still wear the long dress and the two-horned headdress inherited from the nineteenth century — a garment first imposed by missionaries, then turned into pride and a mark of identity.

   The country is a mosaic: Damara of ancient roots, Nama, San of the Kalahari, mixed communities. At Swakopmund and Lüderitz you also meet the imprint of German colonisation — half-timbered architecture, bakeries, street names — and, just beneath it, the painful memory of the colonial wars, which it would be dishonest to pass over.

   At Sossusvlei, the dunes of the Namib offer one of the most recognisable images of the continent. I approach them early, in the first hour of the day, while shadow still draws the ridgeline and the desert holds its silence.

   What I love here is the way people have learned to endure on so little: herds led from one waterhole to the next, spare gestures, hospitality without display. Namibia is not a country to rush; it asks that you slow down.

   Recommended season —

   April to October

   Average duration —

   10 to 14 days

   Write to me about Namibia →

10. X.

    Zanzibar

    Stone Town, the spices, the Swahili melting pot of the Indian Ocean

    

    Zanzibar is the breath of the Indian Ocean, and far more than a beach. I almost always offer it as an extension to a stay in Tanzania — salt after dust. But what I like to show first is Stone Town, the old coral city listed as World Heritage: a maze of lanes where Africa, Arabia, Persia and India mingled for centuries along the trade routes.

    You read that history in the carved doors studded with brass, in the mosques and the merchants' houses, in the scents of the old spice trade — clove, cardamom, vanilla — that made both the fortune and the tragedy of the island. The cooking here is a blend, the call to prayer marks the day, and the traditional dhows come back to port under sail in the late afternoon.

    I work with a few intimate lodges, far from the great seaside complexes, and I want the stop to keep its meaning — the Swahili encounter as much as the lagoon.

    For the beach extension, I favour two more secluded islands: Pemba, wild and unspoilt, renowned for its pristine reefs; and Mafia, where one can swim alongside the whale sharks between October and March. Two discreet retreats, to be chosen according to the season and the mood.

    Recommended season —

    June to October — December to February

    Average duration —

    5 to 8 days (as an extension)

    Write to me about Zanzibar →

11. XI.

    Côte d'Ivoire

    The Baoulé, Senoufo and Dan peoples, masks, cocoa, forests — a destination for the few

    

    Côte d'Ivoire appears in no conventional safari catalogue. That is precisely what draws me back. The country offers another relationship with Africa — not the savannah of the south-east, but primary forest, inland rivers, and a mosaic of peoples one takes the time to meet. Among the Baoulé of the centre, the Senoufo of the north, the Dan of the west, the mask is no museum piece: it belongs to dance, to rite, to the woodcarving handed down from workshop to workshop.

    Here you eat attiéké, that fermented cassava semolina served with grilled fish; you listen to coupé-décalé, born in the open-air bars of Abidjan; you follow the long history of cocoa — the country is among the world's leading producers, and that economy has shaped villages, roads and landscapes as much as the forest itself. At Grand-Bassam, the former colonial capital listed as World Heritage, weathered façades tell another chapter, between lagoon and Atlantic.

    It is a journey for those who already know East or Southern Africa and are seeking something else: a more intimate, rarer destination, free of the pressure of the bucket list. The welcome is frank, the encounter slower, the story one brings home unlike any other.

    For that reason, it is also the destination I offer least often — a handful of journeys each year, by application, within a framework prepared well in advance. If it calls to you, write to me: we shall take the time to talk it through.

    Recommended season —

    November to March

    Average duration —

    10 to 14 days

    Write to me about Côte d'Ivoire →