S1, E24: Has East Africa’s Great Migration Become Too Popular?

In July 2025, a ⁠video from veteran safari guide Nick Kleer⁠ went viral, showing more than 150 safari vehicles crowding a single wildebeest crossing in Tanzania’s Serengeti. The chaotic scene sparked outrage and raised urgent questions about overtourism in East Africa’s most iconic wildlife destinations. But the issue is much more nuanced.

In this episode of View From Afar—the first in a larger safari series that will continue into 2026—Afar senior deputy editor Jennifer Flowers speaks with two veteran safari industry leaders about the crisis threatening the Great Migration and what can be done to ease overtourism, while protecting wildlife and local livelihoods.

Transcript

Nick Kleer: I’ve never in my life seen anything like that. It stopped the crossing several times. Um, and a couple of wildebeests were injured from jumping off the cliffs. Um, I am shaking. I’m furious.

Jennifer Flowers, host: What happens when one of the most spectacular wildlife events on earth, the great migration river crossings in East Africa becomes too popular for its own good?

A few weeks ago, a video went viral. You just heard a clip of it. The video showed more than 150 safari vehicles crowding a single wildebeest crossing in the Serengeti. The guide who filmed it, Nick Kleer, called the scene disgraceful, and the internet agreed. But the issue goes much deeper than one chaotic moment.

I’m Jennifer Flowers, and this is View from Afar. Today we’re asking can the safari industry adapt before the very ecosystem it depends on begins to unravel? As part of an ongoing editorial series across audio, reporting, and feature coverage, we’ll be exploring what sustainable, inclusive safari travel and wildlife tourism could look like in the years ahead.

That includes hearing from policymakers, local guides, community leaders, and others whose voices are crucial to this conversation. Today I’m joined by two longtime leaders in conservation driven safari travel. Nicky Fitzgerald, co-founder of Angama, and Joss Kent, CEO of &Beyond.

Both have spent the better part of their lives building lodges in some of the most biodiverse, most vulnerable corners of Sub-Saharan Africa. We’ll talk about overtourism, the impact of social media, the influx of global hotel brands, political roadblocks, and whether safaris can remain safe for wildlife and landscapes while still being accessible.

Thank you so much, both of you for being here. I know it’s been a dramatic season in the Serengeti Maasai Mara ecosystem, and I’m just so happy to have two individuals here with me today who have so much experience in the safari world who can help us unpack what happened and think about best practices moving forward as a travel industry. I’d love for you to state your name, your title, and your organization, and just a one-liner on what you stand for.

Nicky Fitzgerald: Hi, Jenn. I’m Nicky Fitzgerald, owner of Angama and two lodges in Kenya. I’ve been in the industry for 45 years, I think, and I’m now retired, so I’m sitting from the sidelines watching all this with interest.

I still sit on my board. I’m still very much involved, but I’m not at the coalface of daily operations, and I spent the last 45 years helping guests to make a difference, hopefully.

Joss: Yeah. I’m Joss Kent. I’m the exec chairman and CEO of &Beyond. And I come from Kenya, so this is a very personal conversation.

Having watched this industry since I was small, kind of evolve and then being heavily involved in it for a long time, both sides of the border, both in Kenya and Tanzania and basically &Beyond, as Nicky knows well, because I kind of inherited her alma mater here. We try and leave the world a better place by just trying to protect ecosystems that we can manage and show to guests, of which the Serengeti ecosystem is one major part.

Jenn: So the river crossings and the Serengeti Maasai Mara ecosystem have been marketed as this pinnacle safari moment for decades. How do we get to this point where we’re seeing 150 vehicles at one crossing and who is responsible?

Nicky: I don’t think anybody in particular is responsible. It’s just one of those wonderful experiences. It’s become more accessible to more people over the years and it’s just a great draw card. So who is responsible? Is it the guest who comes? Is it the operator? Who operates? Is it the lodge? Who looks after them? Is it the guide that drives them? Is it the park authorities that need to do better? Is it government who needs to do better county government?

So there’s not one person responsible. We’ve all marketed this great phenomenon and I’m talking particularly about the crossings at the Mara river. You know, the migration is a phenomenon, a particularly extraordinary opportunity to see these animals in their tens of thousands crossing the river. Everybody wants to see it and everybody should have a right to see it. So I don’t think we should be pointing fingers at any one person in particular. I think we should be all looking at ourselves as to what we’ve done and how we can fix it.

Joss: Obviously no one’s to blame, but the society we live in, and especially social media, does have a major part in this. I remember when I was growing up, one, there was only three TV channels. Uh, in fact, there was only one in Kenya, and that only came on at about five in the evening.

But I remember Anglia Productions, you know, the old Natural History productions, which were an hour and a half long, they, they’re very slow.

They took a long time to explain, you know, for the migration, the entire ecosystem that does happen all year round. We’ve gone from that to kind of seven second soundbites, whether it’s on Instagram or social media or TikTok or whatever.

And that seven second dopamine hit is the migration crossing, and that has become the signifier of the migration and the migration’s so much bigger than that, and we can’t control that, and there’s no way you’re gonna change that.

But I think in recent years, that has definitely intensified this focus that if you’re coming in the high season, which we have always been trying to upsell people from coming in the high season, ’cause there’s a lot of other times great times to be in the Mara or the Serengeti, that they perceive it as unsuccessful if they have booked a trip and they haven’t seen a crossing.

And that’s not, I don’t think, ’cause the operators have sold it that they can deliver a migration crossing if you book with us. But I think social media has portrayed that that’s the only signifier of success.

Jenn: So much more pressure from guides to deliver that experience or risk losing a client just based on those perceptions and people demanding a certain thing. It would be great to hear from both of you, what damage visible and invisible does this level of crowding cause for wildlife when we’re focused on just one part, one time of year and one specific action of this great migration that, to your point, is around 12 months of the year.

Nicky: Well, I think the, the obvious one is that too many vehicles are blocking the access points to the river, and with that the animals become under stress and then they start choosing the crossing points that are not suitable, jumping off cliffs, breaking their legs, drowning ’cause they are under pressure. There’s this natural urge to cross to the other side, and it’s a massive urge and they will cross regardless. Well, unless the vehicles are blocking completely.

So I think the blocking of the access points to the river and then causing diversions, which do cause unnecessary harm and often death to the animals as they’re trying to find a different way through. Joss do you know why the grass is green on the other side?

Joss: Well, it’s hard to say now because obviously all the climate change issues have played havoc with the rain patterns across East Africa. Traditionally, they were crossing very much to get up to the early rains up in the Mara, which would come earlier than in the Eastern or Western Serengeti, and then they’d follow the rains back over, and so that was what they were positioning themselves to come across and get into this part of the Mara ecosystem first.

So that was traditionally the reason why they, they followed those patterns. The problem is one, just density of vehicles. But then the other one is just the density of lodge sites and campsites and the monetization of national parks, which is a massive issue in its own right, and not just for Kenya and Tanzania.

By the way, we see it across most of Sub-Saharan Africa, where the great wildlife national parks are, and there’s certain places that have been able to resist that kind of pressure to reduce the number of people going in. But so I think those two are very much combined in adding to the pressure that then causes vehicles and lodges to be in the wrong place in parks that then, uh, interfere with natural migratory routes for all sorts of animals, not just the wildebeest.

Jenn: Beyond the famous Mara river crossings, where else are you seeing this pressure on the ecosystem? Is it just the river crossings or are there other areas that we should, that travelers should be aware of?

Nicky: Jenn, it’s every major sighting. Every reserve will have vehicles around it. I’m talking about Maasai Mara National Reserve. The Maasai Mara is a park that’s owned by the people of Kenya. This is not private land. This is very much public land accessible to all, which I think is a good thing. The Kruger Park in South Africa is the same. If you’re driving in the park and there’s a lion to be seen, there will be 30, 40, 50 vehicles.

So this is not specific just to the Mara in the Mara-Serengeti, but for any of the key iconic species, leopard lion, cheetah rhino. There will be pressure on those animals to view that animal, and not sadly to view it, but to get the award-winning shot with your iPhone. So it’s not even using long lenses anymore and keeping a respectable distance. It’s getting as close as possible to get that shot and putting the guides under enormous pressure to get closer to get the shot. So it happens across the board everywhere that I’ve been on government owned land.

Joss: Yeah, I fully agree with that. And for those of you who don’t know the kind of different types of, of land usage or management in Africa, at a very high level, you’ve got your national parks, which are the same as national parks in America or anywhere else. You’ve got community conservancies, which are usually adjacent to national parks.

And Nicky has a camp in a community conservancy up in Laikipia, and they are separate from the national park and they have their own administration and how they are managed separate from the National Park system. And then you’ve got private reserves, which are either owned by an individual or like Segera, which is our new reserve up in Laikipia, is actually a Kenyan trust.

So Segera is owned ultimately by the Kenyan government, not by us, not by anyone under the preservation, and that could be done in a private environment. For this instance, in the Serengeti, we’re talking about the national park system and the administration and management of the national parks.

And to answer your question, it’s not just Kenya and Tanzania. We see that pressure in Botswana in certain parks. We see it in lesser Mozambique ’cause it’s not that populated or popular right now. But pretty much all of the national parks systems that are more well known are seeing this increasing pressure. It is only going one way at the moment.

Jenn: So we’re talking about national parks here, and I’m thinking about the government and what the government’s role is in all of this, and from where you’re sitting, what could governments do that would make a difference here, especially in light of this recent incident, but with the Serengeti crossing in Tanzania?

Nicky: Well, I think for starters, there should be unconditional support for local park authorities. I think really to work together, firstly, to ensure there’s a team of better wardens in place who can look after these beautiful reserves, support them. And make sure that the park fees stay local and don’t get filtered out into central government.

Joss: Yeah, I mean, definitely in terms of the sums that are spent by all operators and not just big ones, but everyone in terms of park fees into these systems is very, very large. And to put it bluntly, return on that investment is very, very small and, and the problem is fundamentally, one could easily say, well, we should disperse into lesser known national parks or into community conservancies or private reserves and get away from this.

But the fact of the matter is there’s 140 sort of hot spots across Africa of key biospheres of density of wildlife that really matter to the world. Believe it or not, about 34 percent of those are in Tanzania and they’re in the national parks. You can’t just walk away and say, well, you know, let’s go somewhere else. I think that that’s an indication of failure.

So, so one, we’ve gotta try and work with the government to fix this. The second one is, is just, there was a great saying I was once told, which is a fish rots from the head. And that means if you put a dead fish out on a pavement in the sun, it starts to smell from the head.

And I think government strategies around national parks, what they actually want out of them—you’ve got lots of different examples in Africa. Some good, some really bad, and I’m not gonna pick names, but if they really want to make this sustainable long term, and here’s the, the divergence and dichotomy between what is deemed to be the commercial good outcome of monetizing national parks and the politics that go behind it, which is we need more money, we need more employment, and therefore we need more lodges, we need more licenses.

Is a very short term strategy and you end up destroying the thing you’re trying to monetize. Trying to explain that to African governments is very, very difficult because obviously they do have a political lens through which they have to operate, and I get that entirely. It’s not just in Africa. You look at any place in the world where overtourism and overdevelopment got in the way of long-term strategy and planning: the Spanish coast, the Mediterranean coast of Spain, the classic one, destroyed pretty much all of it. And this will happen in Africa too if, if that course and and trajectory is not changed.

Tanzania and Kenya have a great opportunity to really say, we’re not gonna go down that road and we’re gonna limit the number of lodge sites and we’re gonna limit the vehicle density into these parks and maybe we’re gonna increase park fees and make that have scarcity value on this.

And we’re gonna invest more back into the parks than we are right now.

Unfortunately, I’ve been operating for a long time in that East African ecosystem. I, I’m cynical as to whether there’s a real desire at a government level to make this happen. But certainly from us as private operators, we’d love to see it happen, ’cause I think it’s the only way you’re gonna make this area long-term sustainable.

Jenn: So are either of you seeing good practices happening anywhere? Be it Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Southern Africa, is anyone doing it right? A couple of things were popping into my head. I was thinking about the, [ uh, Rwanda policy of $1,500 per person for an hour trekking with the gorillas, which is, uh, low volume, high impact tourism, uh, or there’s also the Masai Mara in Kenya that recently increased fees from a hundred dollars per person to $200 per person to enter the park. Are these making a difference? Are you seeing other examples of best practices?

Nicky: I checked in on the facts of this doubling of park fees, and it has made a difference in the Mara in 2024 high season and continues to, in 2025, there has been a drop in tourists coming in. There has been an increase in park fees, so that is a good thing.

Now my question is, are we verging towards elitist tourism? ’cause that’s pretty much where Rwanda has gone. You see all the, the lodges are all top end. And look, I’m unashamedly elitist. But it does bother me that all these beautiful places are gonna really only be kept for people who can afford to get there.

And this doesn’t take into account Kenya nationals because they have access to their parks at domestic park fee levels, which are very affordable and very digestible and should remain as such. So that’s a given. But when it comes to international visitors, is it only the very wealthy that are gonna be able to see a gorilla, stay in a beautiful five-star lodge and pay $1,500?

That bothers me as well.

And obviously a great chunk of the business in, in East Africa, out of Arusha and out of Nairobi is the wheels business where operators don’t own beds. They just own many, many, many, many, many vehicles and they need to fill these vehicles and push them into the, into these parks. So they are really only coming in for three months of the year and they bring guests at a much more affordable rate. So how do we find this balance between keeping these parks just for those who can afford it and making sure that everybody has a chance to see them? And I’m talking internationally because locally, I’m happy to say that domestic tourism is strong in the Mara in, in my country of South Africa, the Kruger Park thrives on South Africans going there to see their park.

But we can keep pushing those park fees as long as government’s guests can afford to pay for them, but there will be a breaking point where guests can’t pay for them and other lodges can’t. Now that impacts on those lodges, impacts on their business, impacts on the staff that work there. So it is a fine balance. We dance between raindrops on this matter of, of keeping these beautiful places just for people who can afford to go there.

Joss: I think that’s a really good middle ground. You asked what’s happened in Kenya, I mean. As Nicky knows, well, these crossing videos like the one that led to this podcast have been happening all the time and regularly, uh, overcrowding of crossing sites, you know, uh, unregulated on both sides of the border.

But in Kenya, the government and the Mara Conservancy itself reacted to that. So it wasn’t just, I think the increase in park fees. It was right, we’re gonna increase park fees, we’re gonna control this better. We actively manage the situation. It’s definitely improved on the Kenyan side of the border. By that active management, we’ve seen volumes much lower in Kichwa or Bateleur camp, which is the higher priced camp next to it. We’ve seen the volumes of, of guests drop off.

That’s fine in a way, depending on what the landing point is and, and I think there’s other places in the world that have shown a way that way. ’cause we operate in Bhutan as well. We have a camp up in Thimphu Valley and Bhutan watching Bhutan’s government policy of restricting access and making you really want to come. If you want to come, you’re gonna have to save some money. So it isn’t just for the rich. I kind of believe in that philosophy that it can’t be open systems to everyone. I totally take Nicky’s point, but for local citizens, we’ve gotta get more of them into the parks.

You can see this across all of Africa. So put that aside.

But these, these places are very valuable and you can’t allow just free access where it overrides all the resources that there are — some strategy around resource allocation, around vehicle density. Lodge densities draws on all of the resources that it takes to run those. And so I do think that the increase in park fees, if it’s combined with much tighter government regulations and policies that are actually enforced, and that’s a different matter. That tightening and the exclusivity piece without becoming totally exclusive is a good thing. It has to be in the long run.

Jenn: This goes back to government regulation and ah, when Nick was talking about what was going on in that area, he was saying, for the most part, all these rangers, like there are a lot of people who are on the other side of the river who couldn’t even do anything because there just wasn’t enough manpower on the ground to help manage situations. Do you have any insight into Tanzania’s resources here? Is it that they’re not doing enough, or is it that they just can’t, they just don’t have the resources

Joss: In terms of you’ve got quite a few problems coming together because you have so many sites in the Serengeti that were meant to be mobile camps, and most of them now have been turned into full infrastructure fixed camps across the whole migratory corridor of the migration. And that’s accelerating by the way.

So you have this absolute proliferation, the number of lodges that then adds lots of vehicle flow into it. You’ve got unregulated guide training for the huge number of what Nicky, you call the wheels business out of Arusha, and it’s vast. These are fleets of 200, 300 Land Cruisers.

On top of that with the internet, you’ve got now another 300 independent operators who only have one vehicle or two vehicles, and they may not even be the person who’s driving it. They’ve hired someone else to drive it. It’s like an Uber, a safari. That’s the reality. And so if you combine lots of these fixed lodges, and then you get untrained, unsupervised guides, hundreds of vehicles, all selling the Instagram moment in the one month or two weeks of the year.

And their only income comes from producing that shot. You have limited resources from TANAPA and the inability to be in all these places at once. And the underfunded number of rangers, specifically around the migration, you’ve got a perfect cauldron here of, of an issue, which leads to the video in my view, that they’re all component parts of it on the Tanzania side.

Jenn: So every lodge in this region, legacy or new, benefits from the Great Migration. Of course, there are headline making investments right now, though all over Sub-Saharan Africa, which is kind of adding a new twist to things. Most notably in the Maasai Mara, the Ritz-Carlton just opened, and it’s actually facing a lawsuit right now that claims that the lodge obstructs a key migration path for the wildebeest.

And there were questions about whether an environmental impact assessment took place. The lodge has put out a statement saying they have all the necessary permits, and the case is still shaking out as we speak, but it does raise an interesting question about the growing number of camps and lodges in the region, more of them from big global brands. Do you believe these big global brands have a place in this landscape?

Nicky: This is called, um, personal brand suicide ’cause. I know if I’m gonna say something about global flags coming in, it’s gonna sound like sour grapes because another lodge is coming in and I didn’t get a chance to bid on that site and da, da da.

In my view, I don’t mind anybody who comes in. The more top end lodges, the better because top end lodges invariably employ a lot of people. We have 160 staff looking after 60 guests at Angama, and that’s proper. That’s 160 staff, 12 months of the year looking after their families. If you’re looking after guests at a high rate, you need to have lots of people to do that, and that has to be a good thing.

And jobs are the most precious asset where we are. Everyone anybody wants is to earn a living to look after their family. So if we can use our industry to create jobs and an opportunity, and obviously from that benefits flow into communities, conservation, all those good things. But let’s just start with jobs.

I don’t mind where a lodge is built as long as there is rigor around, firstly, the tender process of the site and of the environmental accreditation process. It takes forever. And in my experience with both Angama lodges, we didn’t turn a sod of earth until every piece of paper was in place. And by the way, the certification process, it’s called NEMA in Kenya, is really nice to work with.

They come and they look and they ask questions. Not only do they look to see. Environmentally if this is the right place and where’s your septic tank and the water and the everything else. But they also talk to community members. Does this operator tick the boxes of being a good member of your community?

So the process is good, but according to Professor Ogada who’s raised this issue about the Ritz, now I’m just reading what he’s writing. The question is, was due process. Um, did it happen? That shouldn’t have happened anywhere. If there is a NEMA certification, you need to get that certification and it needs to be correctly done.

And if it’s correctly done and lodges are built in the correct place and have good employment and good community practices and conservation practices, that has to be a good thing for everybody. But it’s Africa and things slip and slide and. Things happen. So we’ll see. So that’s my view on new lodges. So I’m in favor of new lodges.

We were the first or second lodge probably to go into the Laikipia ecosystem at the top end. The Elsa Lodge was Totolos, was there first, followed by Elewana, followed by Abercrombie & Kent, building a lovely lodge there now. And I’m hoping my good neighbors from &Beyond will come and build a lodge there too, because that’s really good for Laikipia to get more top end lodges there because generally we employ more, we train better.

We are also being tall poppies. We have to make sure that our credentials of giving back are immaculate, not just greenwashing. And by the way, it’s not only the right thing to do. As part of a community, but from a commercial perspective, it’s absolutely imperative that you do all these investments when it comes to the flags.

But you know, we’ve been very proud of the fact that we as safari lodge operators are rather unique. We’re usually called a bunch of crazies because nobody in their right minds would go and operate where we operate with all the challenges that happen every day, starting with the safety of our guests.

Let’s just start with that. I’ve lost guests. Joss, have you lost any guests? I’ve lost two in my career to animals. So there’s a whole bunch of challenges you face operating there. And if you look at all the, the people who’ve grown this industry, they’re all huge characters and they run these rather charming places and it’s stories around the fireside and the stories grow with the telling.

And the camp is one thing one night and there’s a hippo the next day, and it has never felt like a hotel. We are passionately not, we are not hotels. We’re safari lodges and we do things differently and I think there’s a certain charm to that and I think guests love that. So I would hate for that rather unique Africanness to be lost in the flags.

And I understand that flags have got brand standards. I went to one of the, the flag lodges and my heart stopped when I was given an electronic key card. Well, in my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d hold an electronic key card to go to a tent. If the flags could reinvent themselves as lodge operators, great.

But if they’re hotel operators, that makes me sad. Joss, you were born and brought up at Kichwa as a little boy. Tell me what you think about the flags.

Joss: Yeah, I mean. I don’t think we can ever say that we shouldn’t allow flags into the safari industry, because I think that would be a ridiculous statement.

But I fully agree with Nicky. What concerns me is what’s the intent, and by that I mean whether it’s Angama or &Beyond. As I said, our, our, our, our true intent is to try and leave the world a better place. Employ well, deliver shared value for communities, protect the ecosystems we’re in. We have to produce great experiences to pay for it.

We’re a for profit conservation company. We’re not underwritten as Angama — they’re, they’re not underwritten by billionaire benefactors. We spend $54 per guest per night on impact. That’s $54 million in total this last calendar year, June to June, at &Beyond. And there’s lots of data about what the impact is in, there are some park fees, but there’s a whole range of other things that are not in there.

But that’s our intent, that that’s the true north that drives us to create really great guest experiences that, um, change people’s lives and preserve ecosystems. Now, if you’re really cynical, you’d say, what’s the intent around large branded flag hotel companies? You have two interests. You’ve got, one is a property developer who just wants a return, and then you have the flag, which is a hotel company that is a publicly listed company that needs to create return.

Obviously you still have got some great examples and, uh, of hotel companies that have great sustainability standards. And so this isn’t some sort of blanket statement around global hospitality brands and their commitment to sustainability. But it’s very different from the safari industry and what drives either owner operator or, or small, uh, small, uh, number, uh, number of lodges owned by one person or even the bigger companies where we’re one of the biggest.

And so the intent is where does that lead you? And I think what you’re seeing out of the Ritz Carlton saga. The intent has bypassed the process somehow because that’s what happens in Africa. You have formal and you have informal. When there’s a lot of money involved, things happen and they don’t happen the way they should happen.

And again, if you’re cynical, if you look at Marriott in particular, you just have to look at the shareholder calls on Marriott. What’s driving the executive team at Marriott? It’s not saving Africa. It’s how do you get off your balance sheet 2.4 million Bonvoy points that can’t be spent because they’ve earned them in city hotels in Ohio and they don’t wanna go back to the city hotel in Ohio with their families to spend the points.

So they’re going into lodges and experiences. ’cause that’s actually where people want. And that’s very cynical, but I think there’s something in it. What are they actually trying to do? In our industry that that has a potential to end in the wrong place if they don’t understand the responsibility that comes from operating in these ecosystems.

If they really understand the responsibility, they’re very welcome.

Jenn: Yeah, and it, it is an interesting question. Like are those lodges gonna be filled in the off season or is it just gonna be during that, that really hectic time of year, during the crossings?

Joss: I mean, I can see Nicky shaking her head. The problem is no.

And, and we have all fought for decades, not just here, but in Botswana as well, where you have this mass peak around the flood water. And it’s not just in the safari industry. You, you, you look at, uh, we operate in India and Nepal. Everest base camp is completely overrun when there’s a huge number of fantastic walking trails, the Annapurna, uh, area that are off-peak walking.

Why? Because everyone wants the bragging rights. They want the one photo, and that is the problem. So part of this is marketing and, and social media, but no, the, the harsh reality is the seasonality has just got worse and worse rather than better and better. It’ll be too late when they find out that, um, the supply demand imbalance has tipped over.

As you see, prices come down, lodges are empty, staffing gets reduced. Benefits get reduced, all the shared value pieces start to drain, but you still have all the pressure on the resources.

Jenn: So apropos of just thinking about the migration and how we see it, when we see it, like if you could start from scratch and say, this is how I advise that we encourage visitors to see the migration. What would that look like?

Nicky: Firstly, we have this wonderful convergence of the Northern Hemisphere summer holidays and the Mara River crossings, and that’s never gonna change. So that’s a fact. That’s the European and American summer, and that’s when people travel. If I could start all over again, I’d say, please, can the migration come into Kenya in February, March, April and May?

That would be wonderful. It’s not gonna happen, obviously. So I think from that point of view, that’s a given. I have been told, Joss, you probably know better than I that in the Southern Serengeti during the calving season in February and March, same thing is happening. So. It used to be nobody down there watching the calving.

Apparently now it’s the same crush. My favorite time, if I was ever asked, when to see the migration. I love it when in the southern Serengeti they’ve had their babies and they’re moving towards Ngorongoro and then those great open grasslands of the Serengeti and they’re going single file slowly up through those once they start the woodlands.

Another favorite time is November and December, when they start coming back down again, that’s another lovely time to catch them when they’re coming down through the Moru kopjes in Tanzania. So there are, there are many times to see the migration — look, a crossing is extraordinary, but it is just one day in your entire safari.

So maybe just don’t come in July, August and September and come other months of the year and find the migration wherever it’s happening, or just look at the beauty of the, of the Serengeti Maasai Mara ecosystem. My God, there are animals, wall to wall, 365 days of the year.

Jenn: To your point, Nicky, I think there’s something about the magic of just letting nature unfold. Whether it is during the crossings or calving season, whether it is not during those times at all, you do not know when something amazing is gonna happen. It is entirely up to that landscape and the wildlife to reveal itself. And in some of the most unexpected moments, I’ve had my most incredible encounters with wildlife in the landscape, and I think.

Going with that mindset of openness, that this is not a movie, this is not a Hollywood movie, this is nature, I think is a key one. Joss, I’d love for you to comment on this as well.

Joss: Yeah. I mean, obviously the summer holidays is a problem. You’re not gonna change that, but in, in an ideal world, what would you be doing?

You’d be marketing all year round migration between the two countries, or not even migration. I mean, the migration is only one piece of what you see in Kenya and Tanzania, and I’ve never been on safari in Kenya, you know, in those national parks and not seen amazing game all year round. Whether it’s in the heavy rains of April, the Mara is still fantastic in April.

So it’s broader marketing and then all the other things we talked about: less is more, restricted, well-managed lodge site and camp density across the whole ecosystem with much better cross-border cooperation between Kenya and Tanzania, which can be patchy in parts. Sometimes it’s going well and sometimes it’s not, but the wildlife doesn’t know a border and that coordination is really critical, especially on on that Kenya-Tanzania piece.

Of the ecosystem, guide training absolutely. Far more disciplined licensing and full proper enforcement and training and testing before anyone’s allowed in any vehicle to get into any national park. They have the FGASA system, obviously in South Africa and, and the Kenya Guide Association have got some very good training programs up in Kenya.

Now they have enforcement issues in Kenya, so they’re not devoid of this, but. The Tanzania piece is, is not as under control.

Jenn: So one thing I wanted to tackle today is social media. We’ve brought it up numerous times over the course of this conversation, and of course, it’s the reason we’re talking today. It can inspire conservation, it can inspire people who have never thought about going to Sub-Saharan Africa to go.

It can also put the industry under a harsh spotlight and sometimes without justification. Joss, I know you had a guide and vehicle at the Serengeti crossing that Nick Kleer recorded and &Beyond got caught in the crossfire. How does social media play a role in helping or hurting here?

Joss: We are involved in this incident ’cause we had a, a vehicle there and so this is, you know, this whole discussion point is very personal because obviously when I saw that and rightly Nick voiced, what is a company like &Beyond having a vehicle there, you know, I was quite shocked.

When I investigated, it turns out that our guide actually did everything right. He followed not only the national guidelines, but the Serengeti guidelines and the &Beyond guiding guidelines to the letter. Uh, he ended up where he needed to be to see the crossing safely, and then was crowded by 60 to a hundred vehicles.

They boxed him in. He couldn’t get out. Our guests didn’t get outta the vehicles. We reported it. The other vehicles that came from &Beyond saw it and reported it and went away, which is the right thing to do. And so I was fully ready at that point when Nick got in touch saying, “What’s going on, Joss,” to find the guide at fault.

In which case there would’ve been serious repercussions very, very quickly. But the reality was we had a guide who followed everything to the book, and so I’m not prepared to let him get rolled over by social media either. It’s not his responsibility to manage the parks or the government, but it is our responsibility as a big brand, just as Angama is a big brand.

To speak up loudly when we think our voice can be a voice of influence. When you take a short term view and you say more is more and more is better, it ends up destroying what you actually set out to create, and you have to row back from that, and I think the Tanzania government must quickly row back from that if they’re to see it stabilize between Tanzania and Kenya.

As Nicky knows, it’s just an amazing thing that I’d like everyone to be able to experience in the right way. Not this way. This way is no good.

Nicky: It’s all a question of personal responsibility. Whatever you do, do it responsibly. I’ll give you an example. There was another video that came out.

This was after Nick’s video about a whole bunch of cars in the Mara rushing towards the river, and the guide who filmed this was in a vehicle in the rushing. He didn’t get to the spot he wanted to get to. So in a fit of pique, he posted on social media: “Oh my God. Look what’s happening in the Mara now.”

Now look at the behavior. He was in one of the vehicles — that’s, for me, completely irresponsible. Nick was standing on one side of the river, filming on the other side of the river. That’s a different matter, but when you’re in it and now you’re thinking, okay, well I must also have my say now. Nick’s got two million views on his clip, let me see if I can get the same kind of traction on my clip. That was irresponsible.

I have been, in my time, been called Karen of the Crossings, I have named and shamed vehicles on the other side of the Mara River, but I have only ever done it myself, not my guides, not my lodge managers, me from CEO to CEO with photographic evidence, quietly, calmly write to the CEO and say, I was at the river at this time. This is the photograph I took. This is your vehicle. This is the registration number, and this is what the vehicle and/or what the guests were doing. And every time I’ve got a fantastic letter back from the owner of that, that wheels business in Nairobi saying, “Nicky, thank you so much. We’ve taken it up with the guide now.” Have they or haven’t they? I don’t know. But it was quietly done. It wasn’t done in a sensational way. It wasn’t name and shame publicly. It was company to company, CEO to CEO saying this is what’s happening. How on earth can the owners of these big wheels companies sitting in Nairobi know what all those 200, 300 vehicles are doing every day?

They simply can’t, so it’s up to those who operate there to ensure that guiding is responsible, and by the way, that backs up to guest expectations. And that means explain to the guests what’s gonna happen today, and to give the guides that confidence to say to the guests, “I’m going to endeavor to get a crossing for you. Hopefully we’ll see a crossing. Once we’ve seen the crossing, we’ll pull out so somebody else can come in. By the way, if we sit there for two or three hours and there isn’t a crossing, we’ll pull out so somebody else can come in and we’ll go to the Mara area and we’ll try again tomorrow.” So it’s a partnership between guide and guest and it’s a partnership between travel agent, lodge, guide and guest, a three-way conversation saying this is the right way to view the migration and not to sit there for 12 hours and push and shove and shove fists full of dollars in front of the guide saying, push, push, push, come, get closer, get closer.

Joss: Yeah. I wish I could say that we could control social media, but every consumer has a choice to do the research and understand who they are buying this experience from.

If it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true, especially on safari. And so if it matters to you. That you wanna do this correctly, then choose your operator wisely, whether they’re the tour operator, whether they’re a DMC, whether they’re a lodge operator. Just do a bit of research and quickly find out if there’s any depth to the background.

I think AI will help. Funnily enough, a 10 second Perplexity search request on a particular operator or some advice that “I want to see the migration, I want to do it responsibly, now tell me how I might be able to do that better” is a good use of your time, ’cause it will give you the answers and you could do it after this call. It comes up with some interesting answers. Um, and it’s not, not wrong.

Jenn: So what is at stake if we don’t get this right in the next decade? If we don’t figure out how to work with the private and public sector, figuring out how to manage these landscapes, like what happens?

Nicky: I fear for a push towards elitist tourism. I think as the stakes get higher, the prices will go up, uh, on park fees and things like that, because that’s the only way. I think there are other ways of managing it, but I worry that it’ll just be, oh, well, OK, we’re still getting X visitors over peak season. If we whack it to $300, let’s see what happens.

We still get the same amount of money, probably more, but fewer vehicles, but guests want to come and I think they will find those dollars to come and the amount of money that is going through, Jenn every day, if you just do the sums of what’s flowing into county and country coffers every day through park fees, and I can say I only know what my park fees are from the 1st of July to the 31st of December.

So guests that have traveled and guests that are due to travel for the next few months, we would’ve channeled $916,000 into the Mara coffers, and that goes to county government and to central government. But one little 30-bedroom lodge is nearly a million dollars in six months. Can you imagine the sheer volume of dollars that is coming through the system and the more dollars that come in, the more is in the trough, the more people that need to feed off them, the more difficult it is to manage.

So I worry that with the money, it’ll just get worse before it gets better. I pray it’ll get better. I think we can manage behavior better. Absolutely. I think there’s a way, as Joss said, we’ve got guide training, guest training, it’s critical to train guests, to train travel partners, to train guides, and support local government and local authorities in managing these parks.

But let’s see, and Africa’s not Barcelona or Venice, there’s a whole different set of rules here. There’s a lot of catching up to do if this is our time now to get a, a share of the chunk of those dollars. So the pressures are different. It’s not like we can stand there with a placard saying, we hate tourists. Go home. It’s not gonna happen.

On the contrary, it’ll be, we love tourists, send more. I will leave it to the youngsters, even though I see Mr. Kent is getting a little bit gray around the sides. Isn’t that right. What is happening? Maybe?

Joss: Maybe it’s stress-related issues.

Nicky: I didn’t notice. I saw you in May. You weren’t quite as gray. What’s happening? What’s happening?

Joss: Oh no. This and that, Nicky, this and that.

Nicky: So I would have to leave it to the, to the braver, fitter, younger, cleverer, smarter operators to really just be the best you can be every day and hopefully from that, it’ll snowball. So if our guides can be the best they can be every day, and how they’re behaving at a sighting, at a crossing, if that’ll just impact the next guide, that’s all we can do is control what we do.

Joss: I completely agree, Nicky. It’s your own ethics, your own ethics, and you can only as, as a CEO of a company, I’ve gotta sleep as well as I want to sleep. And so this stuff is really, really important to me personally. Really important to me. So we can do what we want, but we also as, as bigger brands, and we do have a chance to influence and to cajole and to assist and help, whether it’s community conservancies, private reserves, or governments to change course, to understand the ramifications of, of what happens if you don’t control this, and how do we get to a point that it is much more balanced, more managed without getting to elitist tourism.

That would be great, right? You’ve got the best of both worlds, but right now it’s slightly outta control and maybe this has been a brilliant catalyst to bring people together to have a conversation.

Jenn: If the traveler takes away one idea from this conversation or an advisor or anyone who is listening, what is it? What is the most important thing we’ve talked about today in your eyes?

Nicky: Come to Africa before you go anywhere else. That would be my first advice. And my second, yes, is to, is to echo what Joss said is just do your research. There’s so much out there starting with travel advisors, starting with the internet, with Perplexity, whatever.

Just do your research and make sure that by the time you’ve made that decision, every dollar that you’re spending on this trip is going to be really, well spent, whether it’s at the bottom end, the middle end, or the top end. But just do research and hang with the good guys. And there are lots of us making sure that this beautiful business we’re in will sustain for always.

Joss: I don’t think I can add much to that. I think Nicky’s completely correct. Really do your research and then hold everyone accountable against that research. If you bought something from &Beyond and what you see on the ground isn’t what you thought you’re gonna get, then email me.

Jenn: Thanks for joining us for this episode of View from Afar. In the show notes, you’ll find links to &Beyond, Angama and my full interview with Safari Guide Nick Kleer.

Ready for more Views From Afar? Visit afar.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok. We’re @AfarMedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great stories. Subscribing always makes that easy. And be sure to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platforms. It helps other travelers find it.

This has been View From Afar, a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland, with special assistance from Jennifer Flowers.