Guided Safaris® Signature Collection
Private Gorilla Safari
Africa’s oldest wilderness; a rainforest like no other.
An enriching journey offering a spiritually significant encounter with vast, unexplored landscapes in East Africa’s most iconic locations. Guided Safaris® bring you up close with Gorillas in Rwanda and afterwards, on the trail of Big Cats on endless game-rich plains.
Signature Guided Safaris® Journeys
Private Gorilla Safari
A true explorer’s adventure, for a truly unique safari: Coming face-to-face with Silverback Gorillas and witnessing the Great Migration at its epic crosspoint on Mara River. The original destination for African explorations and the birthplace of the luxury safari: East Africa’s Great Rift Valley has been documented far and wide for its species diversity and spectacular topography. Yet, so many of the true gems of safari life remain secret and off-the-beaten path, even in the most iconic and well-known reserves, offering a glimpse of an old-world, untampered Africa. Guided Safaris® specialized locations are the private hideaways of the Mara ecosystem and Virungas rainforest, by-passing the tourist-laden parks for a far more intimate journey.
Iconic, unspoiled wilderness
Here is the Real Africa. This enriching journey through East Africa is designed for Wildlife Photography and Anthropology enthusiasts seeking a spiritually-significant encounter with vast, unexplored landscapes and real interactions with the indigenous cultures who are its true wilderness custodians. Throughout your journey, you’ll witness the most iconic Africa, in the most private and special settings. And you’ll learn its tales told by rainforest dwellers and Maasai tribespeople you’ll meet with us on safari.
Safari Films
A moment
in the wild
Wake up to views of the mystical Virungas: a place of fire and ice, framed outside your private balcony at the finest luxury safari lodge in Rwanda with a dramatic rainforest location.
Your Private Journey
This journey can be completely customized to your specifications
With the most incredible views of the Volcanoes park right from your suite’s balcony, the experience is almost a fairytale-setting with tropical birds, bamboo forests and mountain wilderness all around you.
Your Gorilla Safari
The Virunga Mountains are a chain of volcanoes in East Africa, along the northern border of Rwanda. Here, our journey winds its way to the scenic Albertine Rift, one of the world’s most biodiverse areas, home to critically endangered Mountain Gorillas and Golden monkeys. The Volcanoes National Park with its beautiful bamboo and fern forests is the finest place to track habituated families of Gorillas and spend time with these Great Apes, watching them at play with their young.
Stay at the most beautiful eco-luxury safari lodge in Rwanda immersed in a completely authentic natural setting at the foothills of the Virungas massif. This Signature Guided Safaris® Rwanda journey is rooted foremost in a World-Class conservation model that protects the Gorillas in their fragile rainforest habitat.
Our luxurious lodge on the edge of the rainforest has the pick of locations; an elevated panorama before your suites of the forest canopy and volcanic peaks of the Virungas. The birding here is outstanding with many endemic species encountered on hikes through the rainforest. An ornithologist’s paradise with more than 178 recorded species and 13 endemic varieties. With our resident naturalists and researchers, our guests can learn about the groundbreaking projects underway for the protection of our Gorillas and the reforestation of this important site.
Harpendyreus marungensis · a montane blue of the Albertine Rift. In July 1958 on the slopes of Mount Muhabura, nine butterflies were recorded at 10,000 ft and this small blue was one of them. Specialized for high-altitudes it remains the best-documented high catch from the whole massif. This species keeps to wet ground — marshy grassland, stream banks, moorland — and flies weakly among short grass.
Your Private Safari
So, just how exclusive will your journey be? Far from the crowds, only millions of animals around you. We’re right along the path of the Great Migration - and the Mara River crossings. Embark on a Guided Safaris® privately hosted luxury journey with a Specialist professional guide and custom-designed 4x4 cruiser while in our care in East Africa. Guided Safaris® camps are luxurious and your safari is led by Africa’s most respected team of highly-rated guides to personally host your game drives for the best suited plans to your interests, whether photography, specialized species or geological interest.
Nothing here is stiff enough to stand on its own. The flame lily climbs by its leaves: each blade runs past its point into a thin tendril that gropes, finds a twig and closes, and the shoot hauls itself up through the thicket on those coils alone. The flower hangs upside down, six crimped tepals thrown back over the stalk, scarlet cooling to gold at the claw. The style leaves the ovary and bends at a right angle, so a butterfly working the spread stamens brushes it with one wing.
The most exclusive Mara
Nowhere in Africa quite embodies this vision better than the Masai Mara in Kenya. While the Serengeti is an endless flat space, the true paradise for abundant wildlife is Kenya's Masai Mara. No other place in all of Africa gives you such magnificently diverse sightings of wildlife in a single morning's game drive. You'll see a rich array of antelope and an astonishing variety of birdlife. However, the true secret to this Guided Safaris® journey is escaping the masses of crowds and finding a magical space all to yourself.
Guided Safaris® have garnered some of the finest Guides and Trackers in East Africa to host your game drives: Their unmatched experience of wildlife localization in each region offers hands-on ability and seasonal know-how to help position you on the trail of the Great Migration. None can match the keen sensory ability of our local trackers to seek game. See Africa with unique people who grew up in these regions and are passionate with their safari knowledge. Walking safaris offer a dignified encounter with East Africa's Maasai warriors and herdsmen who have been an integral part of the Mara-Serengeti landscape for hundreds of years.
Private Gorilla Safari
Big Cat photography
Our unique locations sustain the luxury photography safari model, providing safer haven for our game. Animals are more at ease when encountered on our game drives and linger longer at play. This part of the Mara is renowned as a perfect country for Big Cats and simply the finest place to watch and photograph them. Whether it's your first time on safari, or your tenth, Africa will always be the most memorable journey you have ever embarked on. Your Guided Safaris® package includes pretty much everything from start to finish once you arrive in East Africa - including all local flights, transfers, meals and drinks at the lodges and guided activities. Guided Safaris® also have private options for families seeking exclusive accommodations and camp charters.
With 100,000-acres of exclusive wilderness in our Private Mara and a beautiful luxury camp to come home to: This is the ultimate safari.
Guided Safaris®
A Day on Safari
Private Gorilla Safari
Nothing can compare with the thought of exploring the bush in a land cruiser, living among Lions and Elephants, sleeping in a beautiful canvas suites under flat topped acacia trees, beneath clear star-studded skies, miles away from anywhere. The sounds of whooping hyena, or a lone leopard coughing, to send a tingle down your spine in the midst of the African night.
Guided Safaris®
Safaris with a purpose
Through eco-luxury safaris we have partnered with the governments and people of East Africa to bring an incredibly exclusive safari experience to our valued patrons: Your visit helps directly support these conservation programs for safeguarding free-roaming habitat for Big Cats and Mountain Gorillas.
Go behind the scenes and front-row with our world-class guides in truly remote, biodiverse locations in two unique settings. We host you in completely private regions in the Great Mara-Serengeti eco-system: Sustainable models that are warden to the most crucial conservation efforts for Big Cats, Elephant and Black Rhino. It’s no surprise that our private regions, under Africa’s most substantial conservation models are offering the most successful predator viewing through our low-impact, luxury tourism far away from the masses. This environment promotes relaxed animal behavior by lending protection from the disadvantageous pursuits of commercial group-operators, effects of poaching and hunting and major roads cutting across migratory paths. Continued flourishing wildlife encountered on drives is our greatest reward.
Exceptional service is what differentiates us. We are honored to share our stories, safari craftsmanship and deep commitment to the African wilderness with you.
Founded over 30 years ago, Guided Safaris® journeys feature Africa’s finest private game reserves and crucial eco-luxury programs responsible for safeguarding endangered species, without the crowds that affect wildlife.
Grus — the celestial crane. Head bowed and neck outstretched, it flies the southern sky in a chain of paired stars, falling from Al Dhanab to brilliant Alnair, “the bright one,” with red Tiaki breathing slowly beside it. Rwanda knows this bird by name. The grey crowned crane — umusambi — still dances in the high marshes, and on clear nights above the volcanoes its starry twin banks south over the forest, wings set for the long crossing.
