Don Kassim on safari
What Nobody Tells You Before Your First Safari
Forty-eight years of sending people into the field has taught us what the travel magazines leave out.
I have been sending people into the Tanzanian bush since 1978. In that time I have watched thousands of first-time safari travellers arrive — some exhilarated, some anxious, all unprepared in ways that are entirely predictable.
The travel magazines tell you about the wildebeest migration and the Big Five. They do not tell you about the silences, or the way a lion's breath fogs in the cool morning air, or why the first game drive after a night of heavy rain will change the way you think about beauty. This is my attempt to tell you what the magazines leave out.
The things nobody tells you
01
The silence is the thing you will remember
The first thing that surprises people is not the wildlife — it is the quiet. Not the silence of an empty room, but the quiet of a landscape that has no engine noise, no aeroplane overhead, no notification from your pocket. The Serengeti has a sound — wind in the grass, birds you cannot place, the distant rumble of a pride of lions. But it is fundamentally quiet. And when you have been in it long enough, you realise that ordinary life has been noisy without you noticing it. This is not a small thing.
02
The smell comes before the sight
Animals announce themselves by smell before you see them. The veterinarians who work with our guides know this — they can read a landscape by scent the way a chef reads a kitchen. When you first catch the smell of elephant on a morning game drive, before anything appears in the clearing, you understand something fundamental about what safari actually is. It is not a zoo. The wildlife is not performing for you. It was there first, and it will be there after you leave. The smell is how it introduces itself.
03
Your guide is the safari
The vehicle, the camp, the route — these matter. But what matters most is your guide. A great guide does not simply show you animals. They translate the landscape. They read the behaviour of a herd of elephants and know which direction the matriarch is about to move. They hear the alarm calls of a lilac-breasted roller and know that a leopard is fifty metres ahead in the thicket. They know which waterhole to wait at at dusk. A mediocre guide shows you the same animals — the same lion, the same elephant herd — and the experience is ordinary. The difference is entirely in the human being at the steering wheel. This is why we are careful about guide assignment, and why we will tell you honestly the difference between our guide levels.
04
The first three hours are not the best time of day
Everyone wants the morning game drive. But the hour after first light — roughly 6 to 7am — is actually the best time. The wildlife is most active, the light is extraordinary, and the day's first predators are often still hunting before they settle. By 9am, many animals have found their shade and the day feels different. If your guide is worth their salt, they will have you out before 5:30am, and the hour between first light and full sunrise is when you will see things that people who start their game drive at 7:30am miss entirely.
05
You will be more tired than you expect…
The first two days are an adjustment. You wake early, you are in the vehicle for six or seven hours, the food is different, the bed is different, the sounds at night are not the sounds you are used to. Some people find this exhausting. And then around day three, something shifts. Your body adjusts. The early mornings become natural. The food tastes extraordinary. The landscape stops feeling like a photographs and starts feeling like a place you are actually inhabiting. Most people hit this transition by day three or four. The ones who are most transformed are usually the ones who went in expecting the adjustment period and did not fight it.
06
The migration is not a spectacle — it is a fact
The travel magazines have made the wildebeest migration into a spectacle — something you go to see, like a fireworks display. This framing misses what the migration actually is. It is not a show. It is a fact of ecological life that has been occurring in this landscape for approximately two million years. The rivers that the wildebeest cross are the same rivers. The cheetah that hunts on the short grass plains is the descendant of cheetahs that have hunted on that same short grass for longer than any human civilisation has existed. When you watch the crossing of the Mara River, you are watching something that predates everything you have ever been taught in a history class. This is what people cry at. Not the spectacle. The fact of it.
07
The best wildlife moment of your safari will probably not…
We ask every client after their safari what the best moment was. The answers are almost never the animals that appeared on their original wish list. It is usually something smaller, more specific, more accidental — a leopard cub playing with a twig at 5pm in a fig tree that you found because your guide heard something in the thicket. The big sightings — the lion kill, the crossing — are extraordinary. But they are also predictable in their extraordinariness. The moments that become permanent memories are almost always the ones you could not have planned.
The one thing nobody tells you
If there is one thing that I wish every first-time safari traveller knew before they arrived, it is this: the safari will give you what you bring to it.
The person who arrives expecting to be entertained will see animals and take photographs and have a perfectly pleasant time. The person who arrives expecting to encounter something older and more honest than ordinary life — who is willing to be bored, to wait, to sit in silence, to let the landscape make its own arguments — that person tends to come home different. Not dramatically different. Not in a way they can fully explain. But different in some interior way that does not go away.
We cannot promise you a lion kill or a crossing or any specific animal at any specific time. What we can promise is that the Tanzania we know — the one we have been working in since 1978 — is a place that rewards attention. If you bring attention to it, it will give you something back. That is what nobody tells you before your first safari. And now we have told you.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to be physically fit for a safari?
The physical demands of a safari are nothing like the demands of a mountain climb or a trekking holiday. Most game drives involve sitting in a vehicle for several hours, with stops for walking and game viewing. If you can sit in a car for three hours and walk slowly for one hour, you are fit enough for any safari we offer. The one exception is a walking safari, which requires a reasonable level of fitness and mobility. We always ask about physical capabilities before finalising any itinerary.
What should I bring that most people forget?
The most commonly forgotten items are: a good pair of binoculars (8x42 is the standard), a headlamp or torch, layers of clothing rather than one thick layer, and a sense of patience. The binoculars matter more than the camera. The patience matters more than both. Everything else — excellent camp equipment, high-quality field guides,专业safari optics — we can provide. But the internal equipment, the willingness to wait and watch, that is what you bring.
Is it dangerous?
The wildlife is dangerous. That is part of what makes the experience real. But the danger is managed — by your guide, by the camps, by the protocols that have been developed over decades of field experience. Clients are never taken into dangerous situations without professional supervision, and the safety record of competent operators in Tanzania is excellent. The animals are wild. We treat them as such. That is what makes them extraordinary to be in the presence of.
How far in advance should I book?
For the peak season months of July through October, and for the migration months of December through March, we recommend booking at least six months in advance. The best camps in the best locations fill 12 to 18 months ahead for peak periods. For green season travel — April through June — three months is usually sufficient. If you have specific dates in mind, the most important thing is to start the conversation early. Even if your dates are flexible, beginning the planning process early gives us the widest range of camp availability and itinerary options.
Can I charge my phone and camera batteries?
Yes. All the camps we work with have charging facilities — usually in the tent or at a central charging station. Some of the more remote fly-camping operations use solar charging. The notion that you will be disconnected for your entire safari is romantic but inaccurate. You will be able to charge what you need to charge. Whether you choose to use those charges for photography, for journaling, or for not very much at all — that is a different question, and one we leave entirely to you.
What happens if I don't see the animals I want to see?
This is the wrong question to ask. The right question is: what will I see? The answer to that question, in Tanzania, is always something extraordinary. We have had clients who saw every Big Five animal in 48 hours and felt vaguely disappointed because no single encounter matched the scale of their expectations. We have had clients who saw a single genet cat on a night drive and described it as the most magical wildlife encounter of their lives. The wildlife of Tanzania does not perform to expectations. It simply is. Our job is to put you in the right place at the right time, and then to help you see what is actually in front of you.
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