Questions about where you sleep

Very little on its own. It spans a good bed under canvas and a suite with a plunge pool, and it is not a grade anybody administers.

The question that fixes it is: how many tents? A count of eight and a count of thirty-six describe two entirely different weeks, and the number always has an answer.

Most people do, after the first night. You hear everything — that is the design rather than a fault — and by the third night the sounds have generally stopped being alarming and started being the reason people come back.

If you already know you will not sleep, say so at the enquiry stage. A lodge for the first night and canvas after it solves this for almost everybody.

Some are and many set a minimum age, commonly in unfenced camps where a walk to the tent after dark is part of the arrangement.

For families with young children a lodge or, better, a private house usually works far better: no minimum age, meals when children are hungry, and a vehicle that can come back early without ending anyone else’s afternoon.

Further than camps, because there is exactly one of each. For school holidays a year ahead is not early, and the best houses on the best land go first.

Mobile camps are more flexible, since the camp is built rather than allocated — the constraint there is crew and equipment rather than a room.

You can, and it is expensive, because a private mobile camp carries the cost of staff, vehicles and equipment whether two people or eight are using it.

It becomes good value from about six or eight. Below that, a small fixed camp with a private vehicle usually buys more safari for the money.

Two or three. Each change of form costs a day of settling in before a place starts working, so four forms in twelve nights becomes a trip about accommodation.

The usual good shape is a lodge at each end, a small camp for the heart of it, and one or two nights of something very light in the middle.

A Africa safari is usually quoted fully inclusive: accommodation, all meals, park and conservancy fees, your guide and vehicle, and transport between parks. Most camps include soft drinks, house wine, beer and laundry.

Not included: international flights, visas or travel authorisation, travel insurance, tips, premium drinks, and extras like balloon flights and spa treatments.

For July to October — the migration months in the Masai Mara — six to twelve months is normal, and the best small camps sell out first. Christmas and New Year book up just as early.

For the shoulder months, three to four months is usually comfortable. Inside eight weeks we can still put a very good trip together, but you are choosing from what is left rather than from everything.

This site is a planning guide. When you send an enquiry it goes to Nomad Africa, our partner travel agency in Kenya, who prepare your itinerary and quote and handle the booking, the payments and you on the ground.

You deal with one team from the first email to the airport transfer home.

No. Sending your dates, getting an itinerary and getting a costed quote is free and carries no obligation. Money only changes hands when you decide to hold space at a camp.

The safari areas themselves are well run, and camps take guest safety seriously. The practical risks are ordinary travel risks: road transfers, sun, stomach upsets and not listening to your guide around animals.

Check your own government’s current travel advice for Africa before you book and again before you fly, and take out insurance that covers medical evacuation. We will not tell you an area is fine if the advice says otherwise.