The most underrated safari destinations, according to Travel Leisure

From Zambia's walking safaris along the Zambezi to a Rwandan park where rhinos were absent for decades before a landmark reintroduction

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African safaris have become one of the fastest-growing segments of American luxury travel, and the consequences of that growth are visible in the most famous destinations. Kenya’s Maasai Mara and Tanzania’s Serengeti remain extraordinary wildlife environments, but the concentration of vehicles at game sightings, the density of camps near park entry points, and the logistical complexity of peak-season travel have introduced crowding problems that affect the quality of the experience for everyone present. A pride of lions eating a kill surrounded by twenty minibuses is still a lion sighting — but it is not the intimate encounter with wildlife in an undisturbed natural setting that most people imagine when they book a safari months or years in advance.

The solution, according to a travel advisor with more than a decade of experience planning African trips, is to choose the right destination before addressing any other variables. Lesser-known regions offer wildlife encounters of equivalent quality in settings where genuine solitude is still achievable — sometimes to the degree that a vehicle can be the only one visible from any direction at a sighting, for as long as the sighting lasts. Private concessions and conservancies within these regions further amplify the advantage, hosting fewer guests and offering activities that national parks with higher visitor volumes often restrict. Timing also contributes: shoulder seasons in May, September, and October deliver the dry weather favorable for game-viewing while reducing the peak-season crowds that concentrate at the best-known destinations.

The five destinations below appear in Travel Leisure, drawn from the recommendations of a travel advisor with a decade of Africa-focused experience, specifically focused on finding the crowd-free version of the safari experience. Each offers wildlife and landscape quality that matches the famous alternatives, at a fraction of the visitor density.

1. Lower Zambezi in Zambia is the birthplace of the walking safari

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The Lower Zambezi region of Zambia holds a specific historical claim: it is where the walking safari originated, making it the source of the wildlife encounter form that requires leaving the vehicle and tracking animals on foot with an armed guide. The walking safari’s specific quality comes from the change in physical scale: moving at human pace through vegetation at ground level, reading tracks in the soil, learning to identify animals by sounds and movement through the bush rather than by spotting them at distance from an elevated seat, produces a quality of attention and presence in the landscape that even the best game drive cannot replicate. The vulnerability is real, which is why the activity is conducted only with qualified guides, and the authenticity that vulnerability creates is what draws serious safari travelers to walking specifically.

The Zambezi River gives Lower Zambezi a water dimension that most safari destinations lack entirely. Canoe safaris along the river allow wildlife viewing from water level, offering encounters with elephants drinking at the bank, crocodiles sunning on exposed sandbars, and hippos surfacing from the river in ways that neither walking nor driving approaches can achieve. The silence of a canoe allows an approach to animals that engine noise forecloses, and the river’s own wildlife density gives the canoe safari a program independent of the terrestrial game provided by the........

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