When Is the Best Time to Safari?

An often-asked question. And the quick but accurate answer is: Now.

Here’s why:

East and Southern Africa don’t experience dramatic seasonal differences (like most of the Northern Hemisphere, for instance). In Kenya, of course, you can step across the equator, from summer into winter, without noticing the slightest change in the weather. But that holds largely true, eight and a half million straight-line footsteps, all the way south to Cape Town.

If you take a look at our Classic Safaris (pages 71-131) you’ll see that we offer two to (usually) four or five safaris every month in East and Southern Africa, except April in East Africa. And remember, all those many more than 400 safaris are guaranteed departures.

We safari year-round because the best time to safari is when you have the time to realize a travel dream. Because the wet and the drier times of year each have their own inimitable African charms, and because, year-round, Africa’s game lands are, as Peter Beard said, “a paradise caressed by light and air in their most spectacular forms.” (One paradisiacal sight: the long, golden streams of light that streak down from polished pewter clouds. Africans call them “fingers of God.” Photographers call them crepuscular rays, most of us call them sunbeams, and they are deeply memorable.)

The famous Great Migration, the grandest movement of large animals on the planet, is another year-round event. Throughout the year, millions of zebras, wildebeest, and other ungulates, eagerly awaited by mammalian and crocodilian predators, circulate clockwise around the New Hampshiresized Serengeti-Maasai Mara ecosystem. Our luxury camps in the Maasai Mara (the northern, Kenyan part of that system) and the Serengeti (in Tanzania) are ideally positioned to view the migration’s various dramatic river crossings, which produce so many jaw-dropping pictures. But the migration is impressively ongoing: it’s common for us to see miles-long streams of animals most times of the year from many of our camps and lodges in both Kenya and Tanzania.

This is essentially a travel industry term, reflecting times when larger or smaller numbers of people are free to travel—school terms, vacation times, etc.— and when camps and lodges may have many, or fewer guests. Since we carefully choose our camps and lodges for their intimacy and privacy, these high or low seasons aren’t a major concern for us or our guests. As we say, the best time to safari is when you’re good and ready.

How splendidly wrong we were in thinking Micato was like anyone else. For Micato it’s not about luxury (though there’s that to spare), it’s about authenticity. —Bob Ramsay and Jean Marmoreo