Off roading is not allowed in many National
parks. Game reserves may have different rules.
It is especially irresponsible if several cars are
following animals such as this cheetah who
was clearly trying to hunt. We left shortly after
this photo was taken This is a difficult page to put a title to, as it covers a wide range of observations that I have made over many years. Some of these are about ethics and some are just about good manners and being considerate.

Before you even book, consider the eco-friendliness of the company you are staying with. Some companies are introducing electric vehicles to help reduce their carbon footprint. And try and find out how much of your money ends up in the local economy. That's one reason why I support tipping the staff.

A photographic safari is about a lot more than just the images you capture. To enjoy it fully you need to be excited about the whole experience, right from landing at your destination country, to travelling the final leg to the camp or lodge, either overland or by air. That realization that you have left civilization behind and are in some real wilderness is like a wonderful feeling of casting off all your worries and cares. You begin to absorb the atmosphere of the bush and empathize with nature. The sights, the sounds and the smells all have a part to play in conjuring up the whole magical atmosphere of being on a safari.

Opening your eyes to this sort of view and
listening to the sounds of the world waking up
is one of the daily highlights. Quite often animals
can be seen wandering about from the comfort
of your bed. Curtains are optional, we don't close
them, but we do make sure the door is zipped up Your first night, laying in bed in the dark listening to the insects singing, the frogs croaking, the occasional baboon bark or the sawing call of a leopard. Early morning in the grey pre-light of dawn you may hear lions roaring, and then the soft call of doves and hornbills as the light strengthens. Possibly hippos grunting in the river, or the unmistakable sound of the fish eagle, often called ‘the voice of Africa’.

After coffee in the cool of the morning you board the safari vehicle and there is a pleasant feeling of anticipation as you set off. What might you see first – dik-dik or buffalo, zebra or impala, hyaena or jackal?

It’s all part of what you have paid a great deal of money for. Every moment should be savoured. The last thing you want is for it to be spoiled by someone else, or indeed you yourself should not contribute to lessening anyone else’s enjoyment of the trip, so courtesy, consideration and good manners are the order of the day.

Here are some of the things that can mess it up for me. If the driver/guide is the cause then I will speak to him about it politely. If there is a car full of guests I may wait till we are back in camp. If necessary I have complained to a camp manager when the guide has been consistently annoying. If it's a guest's fault then it may be a little awkward to do much about it. The lesson here is - don't be one of those people who causes issues for others.

Cars dashing to a leopard sighting as the guides
radio the information around. Very quickly the
animal can be surrounded and has to make off
for thick bush to escape the tourists although
often they will break the rulles and follow Speeding. There’s no hurry and it can be dangerous. The faster you go the more likely you are to miss game. And anyway it would be an uncomfortable ride, especially in the back row of a landcruiser/landrover where you would bounce up and down a hell of a lot. Sadly there are those who just seem to want to tick animals off their list, and have no real interest in observing wildlife. I think they have missed the whole point of coming on a trip.

Don’t scare the wildlife. Rushing up to animals is likely to stress them and they will probably run away, or in the case of elephants, they may confront you. Your presence should do nothing to make them alter their normal behaviour. If however, you stop 50 metres from a herd of elephants or zebras or whatever and they wander over to you I can’t see anything wrong with that; they made a decision to come your way.

Don’t deliberately block an animal’s route. I had to remonstrate with a guide once for doing this on a couple of occasions. I have enough camera lens zoom power to manage quite well without having to get in their way. I wonder if part of the problem is too many people relying on smartphones for photographs, and then realizing, too late, that they just don't have the reach necessary for wildlife work, and so they encourage guides to get in close.

Don't crowd animals trying to hunt. I've seen a dozen cars around a couple of cheetahs trying to sneak up to some zebra. Every time the cheetahs moved the cars did. It was ridiculous and could actually be causing the cheetahs to starve.

Here a pride of lions are quickly being hemmed
in by carloads of tourists. In busy areas you can
expect this around all the big cat sightings.
Personally I ask the guide to take me to quieter
places if nobody else is on board, as lions are
the most boring of animals to watch for 95% of
the time. Your opinion, of course, may differ If you are stopped beside wildlife and nothing much is happening, ie. wild dogs sleeping, then either wait for a while to see if any of them decide to move around, or go. Don’t start beeping the horn, as some self drivers did once at a sighting in Botswana. Another one drove right up to the dogs, forcing them to move. Not good. Not peaceful. Thoughtless, Not ethical.

If you are on a night safari try not to blind the animals from close range with the spotlight. If the animlas seem distressed I would suggest leaving them. If using a flash, again consider how close you may be. It's one thing to use a flash on full power at 20m, but up close at night is probably unfair and with any decent flash you can turn the power right down. Watch the animals for signs of behavioural changes while you are observing them with a spotlight and let that be your guide as to whether to continue or not.

The previous sentence could apply equaly well during daylight hours.

Keep quiet at a sighting. Talk in low tones. I really don’t want people laughing and joking in a loud manner, and when there are several cars at a sighting I do not like to hear people shouting between cars, or lots of radio chatter going on. It completely ruins the mood.

And mobile phones again - if there is a reception - turn them off when driving around. Constant beeping and dinging of someone’s phone makes me want to snatch it off them and throw it into the bush, and that's me writing politely. That’s the point - we are out in the bush - and we are there to enjoy it, not to be looking at Facebook and texting our friends. Leave the phone in camp.

Even on the far side of the car from the lions it
would be stupid to get out, even for a moment,
as nobody can say that there arent't any more
hiding away. For reasons no one can really
explain they seem to see humans in cars as
something else, but if anyone gets out that
quickly changes Don’t drop any litter. Yes some people throw discarded cartons away or even empty beer bottles. I find it unbelievable and I would send them away on the first available transport if I had my way. There is a well known saying that applies on a safari, which is - leave only footsteps, take only memories.

I’ve never had an issue with people smoking on a game drive. It’s probably not allowed and quite rightly too. By all means light up in camp over a beer. Out in the dry bush it would be far too easy to start a fire with a discarded cigarette end.

I shouldn’t have to mention this one. Don’t suddenly stand up or get out of the car around dangerous animals. Yes I’ve seen it happen. Right next to a pride of a dozen lions a guest stood up and started to get out (until everyone told him to stop) because he’d dropped his sunglasses. Yes he was on the far side of the car to the lions, but there was no way of knowing if there wasn't another one or two hidden away on that side. Believe me they are masters of camouflage; a lot of zebras would attest to that, if they were still alive.

Lions aren’t pussycats even if most of the time they lay there doing absolutely nothing. I once saw lioness switch in an instant from sleepy mum to alert killer, when a wildlife vet in another car decided to get out for a couple of seconds for some reason.

Sometimes animals are seen in camp, as here
in our car park where these painted wolves have
killed an impala in the early morning (hence the
low quality photo). Depending on what animals
are seen, it may be safe enough to approach
close enough to take some photos. In this
instance the guide came and got us out of bed
especially and told us how close we could get As an aside here, if you are strolling about in camp and there happens to be an elephant about, don’t assume it’s safe to walk up to it. Although it may possibly even be resident (yep stayed in camp with resident eles) treat it with caution and don’t get close to it. You leave them well alone and generally they are content to leave you alone, but never push the boundaries

Respect other guests’ wishes. Just because you aren’t impressed with a pygmy mongoose doesn’t mean to say the people in the next seats aren’t allowed to call for a stop so that they can watch it. They paid a lot of money as well, and not everyone is that interested in lions, lions and more lions.

Sometimes you will have to put up with obnoxious guests who make unreasonable demands on the guide, or super stupid ones who don’t have a clue about the wildlife around them. I’ve had guests ask about seeing tigers in Botswana. I’ve heard guests who call all manner of antelope ‘buck’ and seem unable to differentiate between say, a Grant’s gazelle, an impala or a bushbuck. Someone once suggested that the park rangers go around feeding all the carnivores so that they wouldn't do any killing!

Roll your mouse over this photo of a lioness
As mentioned earlier, lions can turn from relaxed
mums (or dads) to potential killers in an instant.
Once they see a person get out of a car their whole
demeanour changes as it did here
(click for full sized photo) Just grit your teeth and say nothing seems to be the wisest course of action here. I’d strongly advise doing a bit of research about the indigenous wildlife before you get on the plane. It will enhance your safari a lot if you have a little knowledge of the local fauna and flora, and it lessens the chances of sounding like a plonker to guests and guides.

Where traffic is relatively heavy, looking for sightings often becomes more a matter of looking for clusters of 4x4 vehicles parked up, or even just listening to radio calls between guides. Personally I hate this and so if everyone else is like minded I ask the guide to take us elsewhere unless it’s something very unusual such as a black rhinoceros.

It’s much easier to enjoy the drive if the car is relatively empty. Obviously you can please yourself more, and, should you want to stop at a particular place to enjoy watching whatever you have found, nobody is going to be getting impatient.

With a car full of guests its harder to get a sharp photo, because somebody is going to be moving a bit almost all of the time, setting off those tiny vibrations. Botswana seems to be particularly bad at ramming ten people into a vehicle, whereas in East Africa we’ve seldom had more than four in a landrover.

If the car is relatively full then it’s good manners to offer to change seats every game drive. The back is usually the bumpiest and, the hardest to listen to the guide from. It’s not fair to be stuck there all the time.

Yes there is a lot of game in places like
Ngorongoro, but the downside is the sheer
number of cars dashing about which can
completely take the magic away. There was a
lot of heat haze which partly contributes to the
poor quality of the photo but it still clearly
illustrates how vehicles can spoil the view Don’t expect to see wildlife everywhere. Sometimes you go a while and nothing. It’s not the guide’s fault. Animals move about depending on the time of day and the season, and the availability of food and water. Trying to bully the guide or demanding to see some particular animal right now is not on. We aren’t out in a zoo. I remember in Meru in October, there were some large open areas with almost no game to be seen but we needed to drive through them to get to the better places. Some guests were moaning that 'it's not like the Maasai Mara, not very good'. True it's not like the Mara but there's a wider variety of species in Meru, and you can drive almost all day without running into another car, and there is plenty of game once you find the right areas.

Having said all this I should point out that these are accumulated gripes over years of travel around Africa. Most of the time, being out drinking in the scenery and the wildlife is the most awesome and relaxing way to spend my waking hours that I could possibly think of. And to top it off with a tasty evening meal and a G&T whilst chatting to pleasant company is the icing on the cake.