Singita

A local Shangaan word meaning ‘Place of Miracles’, Singita started life in 1993 with the opening of Singita Ebony Lodge in Sabi Sand Game Reserve, an extension of South Africa’s world-famous Kruger National Park. It has since grown to be one of Africa’s most respected conservation and ecotourism brands, operating 15 award-winning luxury safari lodges and camps across South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Rwanda.

Singita remains under the stewardship of founder Luke Bailes, who advocates the high-value, low-impact eco-tourism model. As such, it boasts some of the most luxurious and architecturally innovative lodges and camps you’ll find anywhere in Africa, most of them set within expansive wilderness areas that provide guests with a truly exclusive safari experience.

The Singita philosophy places great importance not only on biodiversity and long-term sustainability, but also on forming close partnerships with local communities. It supports a range of educational, skill development and enterprise development programmes in the countries where it operates, whilst also fostering greater awareness of sustainable practices.

Singita’s original centre of operations was South Africa. It now runs a trio of superlative lodges within Sabi Sands, a stunning quick-fix Big Five destination that shares an open border with Kruger and offers reliably sensational leopard viewing. For a more untrammelled bush experience actually within the Kruger National Park, Lebombo and Sweni Lodges offer exclusive access to a magnificent 33,000-acre private concession in the remote, wild and scenic Lebombo Mountains on the border with Mozambique.

In Tanzania, Singita has exclusive access to the 350,000-acre Grumeti Game Reserve, where it operates five prestigious luxury lodges and camps. Since Grumeti forms part of the peerless Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, it offers excellent year-round Big Five viewing, whilst forming part of an annual migratory route trampled by more than one million wildebeest as they trek north towards the Mara River over July and August.

Elsewhere, Singita runs two small elegant lodges in the 130,000-acre Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve, a top-notch safari destination set in the remote southeast of Zimbabwe and renowned for its dense concentration of black rhino. It also operates an eight-room lodge and exclusive-use villa on the border of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, whose lush montane rainforest ranks as perhaps the best place in the world to track the iconic mountain gorilla.