During my time running Wild Frontiers, I have been lucky enough to do a number of African safaris. From my first ever familiarisation trip to Kenya in 2005 to my latest adventure in Tanzania in 2023, I think I have been ‘on safari’ six or seven times and have always loved the experience.

But up until now, all of these trips have been focused on tailor-made travel, not group travel. As such, they have been safaris based around small boutique lodges and wonderful tented camps, using expert guides in specially adapted, open-sided Land Cruisers for intimate game drives, which ultimately offer the very best travel experience.

But when I looked at the group travel market – Wild Frontiers is, after all, 60 per cent small group travel, with 70 per cent of our clients solo travellers – all I could find were very inferior products. Most of the group tour operators either eschewed safari travel altogether or offered trips staying in big, commercial lodges, often accommodating hundreds of tourists, using minibuses for game drives.

And I thought that wasn’t fair; just because you are a solo traveller shouldn’t mean you can’t go on a proper safari.

So, a couple of years ago, I tasked our product team to come up with a tour to East Africa that delivered a great safari travel experience for a small group, and I am delighted to say they have succeeded in a way that has smashed my expectations.

Right now, I am sitting on a plane back to London, having just led our first Tanzania small group safari, and I can tell you it was amazing, delivering all I had hoped it would. Travelling through three diverse and very different regions of Tanzania – including the epic Serengeti Game Reserve and incredible Ngorongoro Crater – staying in two small lodges and four luxury tented camps, with expert guides and superb vehicles, our nine clients really did have a trip of a lifetime.

As far as the game was concerned, which, let’s face it, is what most come to Africa for, we saw everything we could have hoped to see: Africa’s Big Five (elephant, buffalo, lion, leopard and rhino), plus many other animals including herds of giraffe, zebra, topi, impala, lonesome hyenas and a family of cheetahs. We saw thousands of wildebeest on their annual migration. We spotted over 150 different species of birds. We had bush walks and bush breakfasts, a night drive with infra-red tracking technology, and we canoed on Lake Duluti.

But that was not all. Being a cultural tour operator, we have always felt that the land through which we travel, whether in Africa or elsewhere, is what it is because of the people who call it home. As such, we visited the Arts and Cultural Centre in Arusha, spent time with the Hadzabé, one of the last true communities of hunter-gatherers on the planet (this was an absolute highlight of the trip), and a small community of Maasai, living on the edge of the Serengeti National Park.

And we did all this with wonderful, knowledgeable and fun guides, Pascal and Godwin, staying in the most incredible camps offering some of the best views of the African plains while barely seeing another tourist.

The other thing I must give a shout out to is ‘green season’ travel, which is really just a pretty euphemism for travelling during the rainy seasons, either from mid-March to mid-May or in November.

We travelled the first 10 days of April and it was fabulous. It rained a few times on our trip, but generally only at night, meaning we had plenty of clear days to enjoy Africa’s endless skies and warming sun.

As mentioned above, despite the green landscape and generally longer grass, we saw all the game we could have wished for with tourist numbers a fraction of what they are in high season; this is particularly noticeable in the Ngorongoro Crater were I only counted 10 other vehicles – in peak season there can be hundreds. And travelling in green season is a lot less onerous on your wallet… and what’s not to like about that?

So all in all, I am delighted. If you are a solo traveller or a couple who enjoy travelling in a small group of like-minded people, and have always wanted to go on safari, then this is the trip for you. And if you don’t believe me, check out the reviews of my group – they’ll tell you all you need to know.