Two camps with walking trails in the Kruger: Different habitats and experiences

Getting ready for the afternoon hike activity at one of Return Africa's two walking trails camps. (Photo: Angus Begg)

28 May 2025

Walking trails in southern African national parks and game reserves are growing rapidly in popularity. The Kruger National Park is known for some epic multi-day all-on-your-back trails, but in keeping with modern realities of limited time, softer, luxurious glamping versions have staked their tent pegs in the sand.

“Go on, put your hand in, feel it,” says guide Clement Kgatla from his position atop a termite mound, daring the young Dutch woman. The mound is near the eastern edge of the Kruger Park’s privately managed Timbavati region, not far from the invisible boundary with the Kruger “proper”.

Aside from the cicadas, grey loeries (Note from the author: I feel the now official “Go away bird” name robs the Grey Loerie of its houding, a Dutch word that describes a way of standing, a pose, but which in Afrikaans has come to mean a way of “being”, an intangible essence) and woodland kingfisher, it is quiet here.

The termites’ home, constructed by the secreting endeavours of thousands of these industrious creatures, boasts a few “chimneys”, as they broke open their roof to regulate the heat in their giant house of sand. Rushing to the edge of one such air vent as the young woman lowers her hand are the warrior termites, on standby to deal with the foreign intrusion. The wave of warmth is intense.

Looking down on these beavers of the soil hurrying to defend their home against these large beings looming in, thoughts of Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant came to mind.

A few moments earlier I was holding my breath, a little like Sophie — the little girl and friend of the BFG — but instead focusing on a shot of a woodland kingfisher preparing to beat the life from a small frog.

That’s the Timbavati, the whole Kruger in fact, all threat, big picture, micro-focus and stolen lives.

It is a lucid moment of delightful intensity. Just the four of us, hyperfocused on the life of a termite as related by Kgatla while fellow guide Martin Ndlovu keeps a lookout for danger behind a bush.

And there was no one with whom to share it, by which I mean no vehicles racing over, radios blaring what they had and had not found thus far on their respective game drives.

This is just one definition of exclusivity when speaking the language of safari on a Kruger walking trail.

Softly crunching

Guided by Kgatla and Ndlovu, long spells of birdsong and softly crunching boots are interspersed with moments of learning.

We speak about the countless grasses, sweet and sourveld, zebra and wildebeest, dodge dung and duck under webs threaded between bushes and trees by golden and garden orb spiders. They take turns in leading.

We dive deeper when an opportunity presents itself, like fresh tracks. A relative frisson of excitement is always added when coming across steaming elephant dung and fresh lion and hyena spoor.

What one dreams of when seated on a log: Elephant herd ghosting. (Photo: Angus Begg)

There’s something about being near the edge of “excitement” in the bush, a tension that keeps the senses tuned and alert after, perhaps for the majority, too many years behind a screen.

It is the location in this far northern part of the Timbavati Game Reserve, where the Simbavati Trails camp is sited, that appeals.

It’s well over one hour (of what amounts to a game drive) into the reserve, in this part of the greater Kruger, and a good 45 minutes from the lodge.

Seeing no vehicles, probably no other people and walking out twice a day is part of the deal at the Trails camp. The only time we use a vehicle is when we are collected early one evening, being too far from camp to continue walking at a time when predators begin their hunts.

Pafuri

Opening its tent flaps a month later are Return Africa’s Hutwini and Nkula trails camps in the far northern Pafuri section of the park, bordering Zimbabwe and Mozambique at the legendary Crooks Corner.

As in the Timbavati, it’s an early rise, because that’s when most creatures wake up (as the leopards and lions seek a place for rest after the night’s relative exertions). There are buffalo, elephant, and the Pafuri’s spectacular array of birds, fluffing out the damp on their wings in time for the sun’s first rays.

The Pafuri is arguably South Africa’s premier birding destination, its varied landscape elevating it above competitor destinations like Mkuze and Ndumo in KwaZulu-Natal. Those disinterested in feathers when they arrive will probably have been converted by the time they depart.

This isn’t to discount the numerous elephant and buffalo that hikers could well come across (at the very least their tracks and heavy scent), nor the leopard on the bridge over the Luvuvhu River and the spotted hyenas, the Pafuri’s apex predators.

Pafuri sunset from the Limpopo floodplain. (Photo: Angus Begg)

It’s just that birds, kindly descended from the dinosaurs, add another level of interest that draws the walker deeper into the world of biodiversity.

What happened when a musicologist PhD, a software developer and a clinical psychologist went looking for the racket-tailed roller?

Nothing. But this particular walk, “bundu bashing”, occasionally following game paths through the mopane veld of the basalt valley, looking down on the Limpopo River floodplain, provided us with something to seek, while crunching the gravel. A Pafuri “special” according to the birding booklet provided by the camp.

This was where Dave Chadwick, our senior guide on the walk, had seen the roller with guests three days ago, so he thought, as it’s a regional “special”, that he’d give it a bash. We didn’t find it, yet for me, having done a guiding short course in this place, I realised the significance of the area we were walking.

Standing above Hutwini Gorge two years ago, on a walking trails weekend with Return Africa, I had looked across the Luvuvhu floodplain at the Thulamela Ruins, surrounded by its signature baobab trees, and thought it would be good to visit.

Thulamela Ruins and the Makuleke

I stood on those ruins a year ago, on a hill overlooking the Luvuvhu river, winding its way down to the Limpopo, this time with the Hutwini Gorge on the other side. The significance of the location — and what it means for southern African history — came rushing back to me on the breeze that accompanied the grey clouds and cold that day.

Getting ready for the afternoon hike activity at one of Return Africa's two walking trails camps. (Photo: Angus Begg)

Thulamela houses the stone wall remains of an early Iron Age site settlement, dating back to the period between 1250 and 1670, when a 14th century Shona sub-tribe left Zimbabwe after the collapse of Great Zimbabwe and headed south across the Limpopo River.

It established a number of chieftaincies along the Limpopo Valley, ultimately becoming the Venda people we know today, setting the stage for a profound South African human narrative of the 19th and 20th century.

Read more: Thulamela: Africa’s ancient history of civilisation written in the stone walls

Today, following tribal clashes and conquest and ultimately being kicked off the land during apartheid, the Makuleke tribe have been restored as owners of this land. They are now wilderness guardians and landlords to some premier South African tourist brands. Not only jobs, but careers have been created as a result.

For those who battle with frost on the highveld and persistent rain in the Cape in the dead of winter, such walking days in the relative warmth of a lowveld Kruger National Park may offer some welcome respite. DM

Angus Begg designs and leads safaris, informed by his decades as a current affairs, conservation and travel photojournalist. He hosts walking trails through nature, history and cuisine in southern Africa and Europe.

For the serious hiking enthusiast looking for the long, traditional Kruger Park hikes, carrying all on your back, I recommend Ashraf Sayed, a freelance Private Trails and Tour Guide at AshTrails African Safaris & Adventures.

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South Africa

Softly crunching

Pafuri

Thulamela Ruins and the Makuleke