Selous Game Reserve

Named after Frederick Courteney Selous, a Victorian hunter and naturalist, the Selous Game Reserve is one of the earth’s last great wild places: 55,000 square kilometres of untamed bush, untouched forests, crocodile-filled lakes and emerald green floodplains. Several camps and lodges in the Selous offer walking safaris of various lengths, from a few hours to an old-fashioned walking expedition complete with a train of porters, lasting a week or more. There’s certainly plenty of space to roam, even in the one-quarter of the reserve that’s dedicated to photographic safaris – the rest is open only to hunting safaris. The Selous slightly larger than Switzerland, four times as big as the Serengeti, and the second biggest protected natural area in the world. There’s also little chance of meeting any other humans on your travels - uninhabited since an outbreak of sleeping sickness evacuated the human population back in 1945, the Selous is one of the few places on earth, and certainly in Africa, that visitors can find utter, perfect solitude.

The lifeblood of the Selous is the Rufiji River, a great brown artery of water that stretches far inland from the Indian Ocean. Visitors to the Selous various camps and lodges can wake every morning to the honking of hippos from under the water, and end every afternoon submerged up their necks in a swimming pool, perhaps contemplating a hippo doing just the same in the river just opposite! Boat trips are also a wonderful way to experience the river’s ecosystems – floating upstream, you’ll see crocodiles sunning themselves on the banks, carmine bee-eaters perched in holes in the sandy banks, and perhaps if you’re very lucky, a leopard vanishing into a cave in the rocky wall of a gorge. Why not fly camp on a sandbank, and drift off to sleep contemplating the moon through the mesh of a mosquito net?