The two that ask most of you, and give most back

Riding safaris

The most specialised trip in this list, and the one with the shortest list of places. It needs private land with horses on it and a stable capable of putting guests among wildlife, which in East Africa means Laikipia and a small number of other properties.

It also needs you to ride. Not to have ridden; to ride. Most operators ask about ability directly and honestly, because a canter away from a zebra herd is not the place to discover your limits, and the horses are working animals rather than hacks.

Why it is worth the specificity

Plains game behave entirely differently around a horse. Zebra, giraffe, eland and oryx that would move off from a vehicle at two hundred metres will tolerate a horse at thirty, because the shape is familiar and the smell is not diesel.

It is the closest most people will get to plains game without an engine, and the silence changes the experience as much as the proximity does.

How it goes wrong

A novice books it because it sounds romantic, discovers on the first morning that a full day in the saddle is a full day in the saddle, and spends the rest of the week in a vehicle feeling that the trip was mis-sold.

It was not mis-sold; the question was not asked seriously. Take a lesson at home before booking. The good operators will suggest exactly the same thing, which is a reasonable test of an operator.

Conservation-led trips

Time with the people doing the work: rhino monitoring, anti-poaching and canine units, community conservancy management, habitat and research projects, and camps run by or with the organisations doing it.

It is the trip that most often changes how people think about the rest of their travelling, and it is also the one most vulnerable to being packaged as a photo opportunity.

How to tell the real thing

• Ask what happens there on a day with no guests. If the answer is "the same work", it is real.
• Ask who employs the people you will meet, and whether your visit funds the project or a visitor programme attached to it.
• Prefer working conservancies to enclosures. A monitoring drive with a research team is a different thing from a scheduled viewing.
• Be wary of hands-on contact with young animals. Almost everywhere it is offered, it is arranged for you rather than for the animal.
• Ask what the project publishes. Organisations doing the work generally report on it, and you can read it before you go.

What we will not claim

We are a planning guide, not a conservation organisation, and we are not in a position to audit anybody’s programme. What we will do is tell you which arrangement a place operates under, point you at what it publishes about itself, and let you decide.

We would rather do that than repeat a claim we cannot stand behind. There is a great deal of that in safari marketing already.