In the parks: wildlife, safety, and the people who live there
The rules are simple, and they are the guide’s job to enforce. Your job is to follow them and to remember that the park is not a theme park.
The Big Five, and everything else
The Big Five are lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo, and rhino. The phrase comes from hunting, not from a ranking of what is worth seeing. A trip built only around ticking them off misses wild dogs, cheetah, giraffe, and the birds that fill a slow morning.
Guides know you want cats. They also know that a leopard in a tree at noon started as tracks at 6am. Staying with a sighting is a choice. In a private vehicle it can be your choice. In a shared one, it is the group’s.
How to behave
Stay seated in an open vehicle unless the guide tells you otherwise. Standing changes your outline, and animals that had accepted the car can decide you are something else. Do not call, clap, or play sound to make an animal look up.
Never get out to take a photograph, even if another car has done it. Never feed anything. Drones are restricted or banned in most parks. Ask before you pack one, and assume the answer is no.
On a walk, you stay behind the guide and the scout. You do not wander off for a better angle. If someone in the group is nervous, say so before the walk, not during it.
Fees, communities, and what your trip pays for
Park and concession fees are a large part of a safari price. They are also one of the practical ways protection is funded. A low-volume camp in Botswana or a gorilla permit in Uganda is expensive partly because the fee is doing that work.
Community visits should be arranged with the people who host them, not added as a surprise stop. This site does not run a separate donation program. If a quote includes a community visit, a permit, or a fee, it should say so in the inclusions. Choosing the trip is the contribution. Inventing an extra charity line is not.