Award-winning writer and photographer Stuart Butler always wondered what it takes to become a safari guide. Now he has his chance, and will be sharing the experience with AFKTravel over the next few weeks.
Photo by Stuart Butler
From mid-March until mid-April 2016, Stuart will be joining the acclaimed safari and conservation group Asilia Africa as a ‘fly on the wall’ at one of their wildlife guide training camps in Tanzania’s Tarangire National Park. He will be sending back regular reports on what it takes to be a top-end safari guide with behind-the-scenes candid views, informative blog updates, photo galleries and short videos. He will interview aspiring guides and training staff, learn how to track wildlife and cater to a client’s needs, and partake in bush walk training, fly-camping experiences and night safaris. He will also profile some of the larger-than-life characters who call Tarangire home: the elephants and baobab trees, the lions and some legendary safari guides — Asilia’s wildlife and safari guides are among the best in the business.
Stay tuned for weekly updates from Stuart. (You can also follow this project on Asilia Africa’s blog and Facebook page.)
About Stuart: The author of various Lonely Planet guidebooks about east and central Africa (he also writes Rough Guides and Bradt Guides about Asia and the Himalayas), Stuart has been travelling and working in Africa for more than two decades. In 2015 he and a Maasai friend, Josphat Mako, walked for five weeks across a part of the Maasai lands of Kenya in order to gain a more in-depth understanding of the impact of contemporary lifestyles, conservation, political pressures and tourism on the Maasai and the wildlife of the region. You can read the series about his walk, which he wrote for AFKTravel, by clicking here.
