I am DEVOURING this just-released book Safari Style by the Founder of the modern luxury travel company Indagare Melissa Biggs Bradley. I travel pretty broadly (for a grown-up with responsibilities) but I've never been on a safari, and never thought I wanted to (after spending a couple of nights in a glam tent in the Sahara desert to celebrate my 50th - another story). That is, until seeing the gob-smackingly beautiful shots taken across seven African countries from Rwanda to South Africa by Milan-based photographer Guido Taroni.
I spoke with Bradley recently about Safari Style, and why she is so intensely passionate about safaris in particular. Bradley went on her first month-long safari at the age of 12 with her grandmother, who herself had fallen in love with the African bush in Kenya in the 1960s when it first opened up. Bradley has gone on 40 safaris since. What charges me the most is Bradley's emphatic belief that getting people to fall madly in love with the African bush, and other wildlife areas, is the way that we can save them. "Over the years a lot of people in Africa realized how to use tourism to benefit local communities and to really be an integral part of conserving wildlife and wild places," says Bradley. "The safari industry has emerged as a powerful force to impact positive change. Every lodge in the book and every safari-goer who travels to them is using tourism to protect our shared environment and heritage ... And covid has brought devastation to their efforts ... Now is the time to go."
Bradley's belief in tourism as more than an adventure, but also as a way to create stewards for endangered parts of our planet, has urgently reminded me to consider what I can give to the places and people I visit, given all the wonder I am left with after I leave. To get a full understanding of Bradley's views, listen to her Global Conversation podcast on safari travel here.
To get a copy of Safari Style signed by Bradley, go here.
If you're thinking about taking a safari, and not sure whether you should seek out Namibia's moon-like landscape or the jungles of Rwanda, you may find Indagare's "safari matchmaker" service helpful here.
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