Sabi Sand Game Reserve

Sabi Sand Game Reserve tickets and tours: which one to book

The Sabi Sand is a block of privately owned game reserves on the south-western border of the Kruger National Park, in the lowveld of the South African province of Mpumalanga, and it is, by general agreement, the best place in Africa to see leopards, and one of the best for the big five as a whole, in the company of expert guides and in considerable comfort. It is visited quite differently from the national park next door. There are no day visitors, no self-driving and no campsites: one can enter only as a booked guest of one of its twenty or so lodges, which range from the merely expensive to some of the most luxurious and costly safari camps in the world, the names of several of which, Londolozi, MalaMala, Singita, Sabi Sabi, Lion Sands, Ulusaba, are famous among travellers.

The rate includes all meals, usually drinks, and two game drives a day, of three to four hours each, at dawn and in the late afternoon, continuing after dark with a spotlight, in open four-wheel-drive vehicles carrying six to ten guests, with a trained ranger at the wheel and a tracker, generally a Shangaan man from one of the neighbouring villages, perched on a seat over the bonnet; walks in the bush with an armed guide are offered in the middle of the morning. The vehicles may leave the tracks to follow an animal into the bush, no more than two or three are allowed at a sighting, and they keep in touch by radio, so that little is missed. The reserve is reached by road from Johannesburg in five to six hours, entering by one of three gates, Shaw's, Newington or Gowrie, at which a conservation levy is paid; by scheduled flights from Johannesburg or Cape Town to the airports of Skukuza, inside the Kruger, or of Nelspruit and Hoedspruit, each one to two hours' drive away; or by light aircraft directly to the lodges' own airstrips. A stay of three nights is usual, and families are welcome at many lodges, though most set a minimum age for game drives.

Visiting Sabi Sand Game Reserve: what you will see

The Sabi Sand takes its name from the two rivers that cross it, the Sabie, in the south, and the Sand, which flows through its heart, and it covers about 650 square kilometres of mixed bushveld, open grassy clearings, thickets, and riverine forest of jackalberry, sycamore fig and leadwood, a landscape, well watered by the standards of the lowveld, which supports dense populations of impala, kudu, nyala, bushbuck, wildebeest, zebra and giraffe, and therefore of the predators that eat them. Its history explains its character. The land was part of the original Sabie game reserve proclaimed by President Kruger in 1898, the ancestor of the Kruger park, but when the national park was defined in 1926 this western portion was excluded and divided into farms, which were bought, mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, by wealthy families from Johannesburg as winter hunting and cattle estates. In 1948 fourteen of these landowners agreed to pool their properties as a private nature reserve, the oldest of its kind in South Africa, giving up hunting, and several of the farms are still owned by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those men, the Varty family of Londolozi, the Rattrays of MalaMala and the Baileses of Sabi Sabi among them. MalaMala began taking paying guests for photographic safaris in 1964, among the first anywhere to do so, and Londolozi, in the 1970s, pioneered the model that has since been copied all over the continent, of a small, luxurious camp, highly trained guides, and a partnership with the neighbouring community.

In 1993 the veterinary fence that had separated the reserve from the Kruger since 1961 was taken down, along a common boundary of some fifty kilometres, so that animals now move freely between the two, and the Sabi Sand is ecologically a part of the greater park, which with the adjoining conservation areas in Mozambique and Zimbabwe covers some thirty-five thousand square kilometres. The leopards are its glory. Leopards are everywhere secretive, nocturnal and afraid of people, but here, where they have been followed by vehicles every day, without ever being harmed, for some fifty years and a dozen generations, they have come to ignore them completely, and can be watched at a few metres as they hunt, mate, drag a kill into a tree or play with their cubs. The guides know each animal by name and ancestry, a lineage recorded in detail since a female known as the mother leopard first allowed the Varty brothers to follow her in 1979, and sightings are close to certain during a stay of three nights. Lions, in several large prides and coalitions of males whose territorial wars are followed by enthusiasts all over the world through daily broadcasts from the reserve, elephants, buffalo in herds of hundreds, white rhinoceroses, closely guarded, wild dogs, which den here in winter, cheetahs, spotted hyenas, hippos, crocodiles and some 350 species of birds complete the list.

Sabi Sand Game Reserve: best time to go, seasons and hours

The reserve is open all year. The dry winter, from May to September, is generally reckoned the best time for game viewing: the bush is thin and leafless, the grass is low, water is confined to the rivers and a few dams, and the animals concentrate round them, the days are sunny and mild, 22 to 26 degrees, and the dawn and evening drives are cold, for which the lodges supply blankets and hot-water bottles, though warm clothing, hat and gloves are needed.

The summer, from October to April, is hot, 30 to 35 degrees, humid and green, with thunderstorms in the afternoons, thick vegetation that hides animals at a distance, the birth of impala lambs in November and December, which draws the predators, migrant birds in full plumage and dramatic skies, and rates at many lodges are lower; leopards are seen just as reliably. The area is classed as a low-risk malaria zone, the risk being highest from November to April, and advice on prophylaxis should be taken. Book the best-known lodges a year ahead for the winter months. Allow three to four nights. The Panorama Route along the Blyde river canyon is two hours to the west.