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About WalkingSafaris.com
Our mission
WalkingSafaris.com is dedicated to the understanding and practice of the walking safari, the form of African photographic tourism in which guests leave the vehicle and explore wild country on foot with expert guides. Our aim is simple: to help more people experience a walking safari, and to help them choose the right one.
Norman Carr built the walking safari on a simple conviction: wildlife survives only when the people who live alongside it have reason to protect it. Ian Player added the other half: wild country, met on foot, changes the person walking through it. Every walking safari still does both. It sustains the guides, scouts and communities whose livelihoods depend on wild places staying wild, and it sends travelers home seeing the world differently.
Who publishes this site
WalkingSafaris.com is published by The Safari Heritage Collection. We are the custodians of Chibembe, on the east bank of the Luangwa River in Zambia, where Norman Carr's guests first crossed the river and set out on foot, and of Lion Camp, where that first walking circuit ended in 1961. We also own The Bushcamp Company, which runs six bushcamps in South Luangwa.
We tell you this up front because it shapes the site in two ways. It is why we can publish the Chibembe records, the 1961 Lion Camp lease and photographs from our own walks: they come from our own archive and our own guides. And it is why we hold ourselves to a stricter rule than an outside publisher would need. Our camps are assessed on exactly the same published criteria as every other camp in Africa, and where another park or operator does something better, we say so.
Walking is at the center of what we do. It is optional, of course, as our game drives are equally impressive. These experiences come down to guides, and we have some of the best guides in all of Africa. All ten of our camps offer walking safaris, and eight qualify as Walking Camps under our criteria. That experience on the ground is what we have tried to put into this site, for every park and every kind of walker, not just our own corner of Zambia.
Most of what you will find here has nothing to do with our camps: how to choose a park, how fit you need to be, what to wear, and how walking works in Kenya, Botswana, Kruger or Mana Pools. If you never stay with us, we hope the site still helps you find the right walk.
Where the Collection works
Operators can pay for a featured listing, which adds photos, contact details and a link. Payment never affects how a camp is classified or what our articles say about it. Half of every featured-listing fee goes to the Zambia Wildlife & Community Foundation, a conservation charity co-founded by the family behind the Collection.
Our editorial standards
- We tell you who we are. Any article or listing that features one of our own camps carries a publisher's note saying so.
- One set of criteria for every camp, ours included. Every camp is classified as a Walking Expedition, a Walking Camp or Walks Offered using the same six published tests.
- Payment buys visibility, never verdicts. Featured listings are labeled, and payment never changes a camp's classification, its place in a comparison, or what we write about it.
- Facts are sourced. Claims are checked against operators, park authorities, published records or reputable specialists. Where sources disagree, we say so.
- We describe walking as it really is. Distances, group sizes, guiding and safety are reported as operators actually run them.
- We do not criticize other operators. We compare products on published criteria, and leave out what we cannot verify.
- We do not name individual guides. Teams change from season to season, and we would rather be accurate than out of date.
- We correct mistakes quickly. Significant corrections are noted at the foot of the article.
How we classify camps
A camp qualifies for our directory when walks are scheduled daily, take place in country with elephant, buffalo and lion, are led by licensed and armed guides or rangers, last long enough to be a real walk, keep groups small, and are legally permitted. We then place each camp in one of three formats. These are formats, not rankings.
Fenced or unfenced? Many camps sit in private concessions or reserves that are fenced on one or more sides but open onto a national park. Readers have asked which camps are in completely unfenced country, so where we know, we say so in the camp's listing.