Which country, and where each one loses.

We sell nine countries and we have no incentive to prefer one, which is either a licence to be useless or an opportunity to be straight. Here is the version I give on the telephone, including the parts that lose us bookings.

Kenya — the default, and rightly

More variety in less distance than anywhere else in Africa: cats in the Mara, elephant under Kilimanjaro, arid-country species four hundred kilometres north, and an Indian Ocean archipelago ninety minutes from any of it. Add the conservancy model — walking, night drives, off-road, capped vehicles — and it is the most flexible safari country there is, at perhaps two-thirds of Botswana’s cost.

Where it loses: the Masai Mara national reserve in August is genuinely crowded, and guests who book the cheap version of Kenya get exactly that experience and go home saying so. Kenya done badly is worse than Tanzania done badly.

Tanzania — scale, and the calving

The Serengeti is ten times the size of the Mara reserve, Ngorongoro is unlike anywhere, and the February calving at Ndutu — half a million births in three weeks — is arguably the single greatest wildlife spectacle on earth. Kenya has no equivalent.

Where it loses: park fees are the highest in East Africa, off-road driving and night drives are prohibited across most of the parks, and walking barely exists. You are more constrained in Tanzania than in Kenya, for more money. Seronera in August can put twenty vehicles at a leopard.

Botswana — solitude, at a price

A deliberate forty-year policy of high cost and low volume, and it works: twelve beds on two hundred thousand acres, and mornings with no other vehicle. The Okavango is genuinely unlike anywhere — an inland delta that floods at the height of the dry season — and Linyanti holds elephant in numbers that are hard to describe.

Where it loses: price, straightforwardly. Two to three times Kenya for arguably less varied game viewing and no migration. Many camps set a minimum age of eight or twelve. And for a first safari it can underwhelm — guests who do not yet know what they are looking at get less from emptiness than from abundance.

“Botswana is the country people save for and Zambia is the country guides go on holiday to. That is not the same recommendation.”

Zambia and Zimbabwe — the guides’ choice

Zambia invented the walking safari and still does it best; Zimbabwe’s professional guide qualification fails most candidates and is poached from across the continent. Both are roughly half Botswana’s cost, both have superb leopard, and both see a fraction of the visitors.

Where they lose: infrastructure and seasonality. Much of Zambia closes from November to April. Mana Pools shuts in the rains. Neither has the polished lodges of South Africa nor the logistics of Botswana, and both reward a traveller who already knows what they want. Not a first safari.

South Africa — the easy one

The best leopard viewing on earth in the Sabi Sand, malaria-free Big Five reserves in the Eastern Cape, direct long-haul flights, and Cape Town and the winelands attached. For a family, a nervous traveller or a fortnight that has to be a holiday as well as a safari, nothing else comes close.

Where it loses: wilderness feel. The reserves are smaller and more managed, and a good sighting is shared. There is no migration and no sense of enormous space. Guests who want to feel a long way from anywhere should go north.

Rwanda, Uganda, Namibia — the specific ones

Rwanda for gorillas with minimum friction, at USD 1,500 a permit. Uganda for the same gorillas at USD 800 plus the best chimpanzee tracking in Africa, in exchange for longer drives. Namibia for landscape rather than wildlife — the oldest desert on earth, self-drivable, malaria-free across most of it. None of the three is a general-purpose safari country and we would not sell them as one.

The two questions that actually decide it

Is this your first safari? If yes, Kenya, Tanzania or South Africa. Abundance teaches you what you are looking at; the connoisseur countries will be wasted and you will not know it.

Do you want to be out of the vehicle? If yes, Zambia, Zimbabwe or Kenya’s conservancies. If that is not important, the field opens up considerably and price becomes the deciding factor.

Everything else — the migration, the delta, the gorillas — is a preference rather than a decision, and any competent specialist can build around it. If yours starts by telling you which country is best without asking either question, telephone somebody else.