Off the beaten track

With African safaris, as with so many travel adventures, it often pays to dig a little deeper. For most travellers, one visit to Africa will never be enough. Getting off the beaten track on subsequent trips, away from the most popular wildlife locations, is likely to lead to fascinating and unique discoveries. These lesserknown gems are some of my personal favourites for capturing wildlife with a more authentic feel.

Ruaha National Park is a remote wilderness in Tanzania, the largest protected area in East Africa. It’s one of my personal favourites for wildlife photography, where I’ve spent time with elephants, lions, cheetahs, and leopards, as well as lovely lilac-breasted rollers and bright blue and orange rock agamas –all with far less crowds and a more authentic feel than Africa’s best-known parks.

The Makgadikgadi Pans, another personal favourite, is a vast desert area of white salt pans, where you can catch a sunrise with inquisitive semi-habituated meerkats as they warm their bellies in the morning sun, and spot wandering ostriches, lions, and springboks. I’d also recommend learning about the desert with indigenous San bushmen and visiting the baobabs on the remote granite outpost Kubu Island.

Etosha National Park in north-west Namibia is popular with photographers for plentiful wildlife, from leopards to elands, and magical light across the arid, desert landscapes. Intrepid explorers can drive a 4X4 down the Skeleton Coast and explore the country’s red deserts, including the petrified trees on the salt pans of Deadvlei and Sossusvlei.

Malawi is unlikely to be many people’s first-time venture into Africa, but wildlife is thriving in the country’s little-known parks and reserves, especially Liwonde National Park and Majete Wildlife Reserve, with restored populations of black rhino, elephants, lions, and more, and an easygoing lesscrowded feel than Kenya or Tanzania’s major parks. Nyika National Park, the largest and oldest of Malawi’s national parks, in the north, is certainly one for adventurers: a wild, highlands area of grasslands and wooded valleys with leopards, roan antelope, elands and more than 400 bird species.

But there’s more to African wildlife than safaris. The isolated island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa, has developed distinct ecosystems and wildlife over millions of years, with 90 per cent of the island’s animals and plants endemic and not found anywhere else on earth, including ring-tailed lemurs, leaping Verreaux’s sifakas, and otherworldy aye-ayes.

One of my golden memories is sitting amongst dozens of gelada monkeys, also known as bleeding-heart monkeys, as they fed, groomed and played on the high plateau of Ethiopia’s rugged green Simien Mountains National Park, the area also home to Walia ibex and lammergeiers (bearded vultures), which soar over rugged peaks. There’s more remarkable creatures in Bale Mountains National Park, in south-east Ethiopia, including endangered Ethiopian wolves and spiral-horned nyala.

Birders’ paradise

If you’re a twitcher, your criteria for what you want to see and where you want to go is likely to vary from other wildlife enthusiasts. As any true bird lover knows, it isn’t always about numbers, but finding a rare or remarkable species. You’ll be pleased to hear that Africa will not disappoint.

With an abundance of water, there’s no shortage of life across the Okavango Delta, and that includes birds. Botswana’s recorded more than 600 different bird species, with many of the resident or migratory species found in the delta waterways, including carmine bee-eaters, storks, malachite kingfishers, and, the world’s heaviest flying bird, the kori bustard. The Moremi Game Reserve on the eastern side of the Okavango Delta provides especially good bird watching on its lagoons.

I was impressed by the spectacular bird-life at Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania, which has more than 350 species, from fish eagles to noisy Hadada ibises, and with grey herons hitching rides across calm silvery lakes on the backs of hippos.

For a bright pink spectacle, head to Lake Nakuru in Kenya or Lake Natron to witness thousands of flamingos – poetry in motion. If you’re looking for more unusual species, north-east Zambia is home to the prehistoriclooking shoebill, a large ‘living dinosaur’ with a massive bill. Bangweulu (meaning “where the water meets the sky”) is the place to go, recognized as a globally important wetlands and birding area, with more than 400 bird species, from pygmy geese to wattled cranes. You have a good chance of seeing shoebill chicks in nests from July to September.

Up in north-west Africa, Djoudj National Park in Senegal is one of the world’s most important bird sanctuaries. The colossal wetlands are vital for millions of migrating birds, including white pelicans, purple herons, African spoonbills and other species that come to rest, feed and breed, doing their best to avoid the jaws of big crocs in the waterways.

The Saloum Delta, also in Senegal, is another renowned birding hotspot and conservation area, with around 200 species, including ospreys, spoonbills, and sky-filling populations of Royal terns, often viewed from a peaceful pirogue boat out on the water.

Safari etiquette

The golden rule on safari is that the animals come first. It may be tempting to edge closer or to join a crowd of vehicles around a special sighting, such as a lioness and her cubs or a marauding leopard, but it’s wrong to cause wild animals stress, fear and anxiety, and it can harm their health and safety, especially nesting birds or animals with infants. Observe, but don’t disturb. In some national parks, there’s been a spate of foolish behaviour, including people reaching out to stroke passing lions, allowing cheetahs up on roofs or inside vehicles, and getting out of vehicles to take selfies with giraffes and elephants, even if big cats are nearby. For the animals’ sakes and your own, always be sensible and act safely. Follow the advice of local guides and drivers at all times. Photographers should remember that a photo isn’t worth risking an animal’s health and happiness, or their own safety, for. Keep your distance, and if any animal is surrounded by vehicles or looks uneasy, move further away.