Planning a safari holiday always floods my body with happiness endorphins.
Maybe it’s something to do with my imagination. As I browse through all the magnificent photos of my destination, I begin to picture myself in each place; feeling the warm breeze coming off the plains, laughing among the people sipping a G&T after a busy game drive, or diving off a dhow boat into the cool blue of the Indian Ocean—it’s almost as if I am there, experiencing the trip before I’ve even left my office chair.
I find that the planning phase of the safari is the purest and most creative part of travelling, because it involves all my dreams and expectations—all the best parts of the destination floating around in my head as I select the lodge, the experiences, and pictures of the animals I’m hoping to see. Once I’m done planning, I’m left with the culmination of all my research, hopes and wishes.
It is like a work of art.
It is truly my holiday.
Planning a safari is such a wonderful aspect of the trip, I often wonder why people are so happy to hand over all the fun and responsibility to someone they hardly know.
In African travel, it has become fairly accepted to let an agent recommend and book your entire safari, which I think is quite sad. Africa has developed a reputation of somewhere unknown and out of the realm of self-planners.
But that’s simply not the case.
Africa is, in fact, a wonderful continent to take the creative reins and run. It is filled with all the romance, culture, wildlife, landscape and intrigue that makes planning a safari one of the greatest adventures of your life. And that’s before you’ve left home.
The biggest roadblock is that there has never been a single resource or platform available for people to browse, dream, research, compare prices, ask for help AND book a safari, all in one place.
Until now.
Why we built Timbuktu
We built Timbuktu for one simple reason.
We wanted to make planning a safari fun and easy again. We wanted to create a space that takes all the joy of planning—browsing fantastic photos, easily comparing lodges, reading through experiences—and put it into one place where you can create your own trip, get advice from experts to make sure all is in order, and then go ahead and safely book it too.
Now, with over 10 countries, including some of the most unknown regions in Africa, and 1000s of curated lodges on the system, each with their own unique write-ups and high-res images, the site is finally ready for you to dive in and enjoy.
One of the aspects of planning a safari that some people find challenging is the choice.
Sometimes, one is like a child in a candy shop, overwhelmed with all the options. And at times you may not even know what you want. “I’ll take that and that and that, and then there’s that whole other area that needs to be explored,” you say.
If at, any point, the process of planning a safari becomes overwhelming, Timbuktu has a whole host of experts available at the drop of an instant message, call or email. With a deep understanding of Africa, a willingness to listen, and available pretty much 24/7, the experts are there to help guide the way. You can easily take your hands off the wheel for a moment and ask for directions. Safaris can get expensive too, which is why it’s great to have someone on the line who might be able to say: “hold on a minute, why don’t you try this option which is a bit cheaper, but has just as much value.”
This is what makes Timbuktu unique; we’re here to give directions and a helping hand, but the end trip is 100 percent yours. And most importantly, you’ve had fun while creating it.
The imagination is a powerful thing, and planning a safari should be one of the most enjoyable parts of a trip. It’s an opportunity to take a virtual holiday from your office chair as you pour out your hopes and dreams, getting creative, and laying out a trip that you didn’t just pick off the shelf, but designed all on your own.
