There are moments when life tilts beneath you. The ground shifts and you realise the way you have been moving is no longer the way forward. The past eight months have been exactly that for me. A reckoning. A stripping back. A season of hard questions with no shortcuts to the answers. At Rhino Africa, we’ve always carried a simple belief. Travel must give more to Africa than it takes. If it does not serve Africa, it does not deserve to exist. That has never been a slogan. It has been our compass. And then the universe decided to test whether I still believed it. I found myself exactly where I needed to be. Samara. The reckoning met the landscape, and the compass swung true again.
Your true compass will always lead you in the right direction, Image Credit: Samara
The Audacity of Return
I arrived at Samara Private Game Reserve without an agenda. No clipboard. No notes to take. I was simply a friend showing up to celebrate a birthday. And that turned out to be the greatest gift of all. It stripped away every filter that comes with business and left me with nothing but the truth of the place.
When I last visited 15 years ago, Samara was still a bold idea. An experiment that some would have called irrational. A dream to return the Great Karoo to wilderness. I remember being intrigued at the time, but I could not see the scale of the vision. I did not understand the audacity of Sarah Tompkins and her family, who looked at this land and imagined a very different future.
The Land, Rewritten
Driving through the gates again, I was not prepared for what waited. The Karoo opened like a book I thought I knew but had never really read. Rolling grasslands where sheep once grazed. Mountains that stretched into eternity. And moving across them were lions and elephants. Ghosts finally coming home to walk the land they had not touched in 200 years.
The hair rose on my arms. I felt the thud of history under my feet. Humility swept through me. I had not come here searching for perspective, but perspective found me.
And it reminded me why we do this work. Not for boardrooms. Not for targets. For moments like this. For the feeling of being floored by beauty and humbled by a vision that has already begun to change a landscape.
A place that feels like coming home, Image Credit: Samara
A Line Drawn in the Sand
Every reserve begins with land. But Samara began with something more. It began with a vision that defied reason.
Two decades ago, Sarah Tompkins and her husband, Mark, stood on this scarred farmland. The soil was tired, the fences endless, the wildlife gone. They looked at it and said: No. This will not be another chapter of extraction. This will be a story of restoration. A story of hope. And they began the long, patient work of stitching the wilderness back together.
Not Everything Stays Lost
What followed was not just conservation. It was resurrection. They brought back what had been lost. First, the cheetahs, fast and fragile, like a spark of light across the grasslands. Then the elephants, returning with heavy steps that pressed hope into soil that had not felt their weight for generations. And then the lions. Their roar rolled through the mountains for the first time in centuries, shaking the silence and leaving goosebumps in its wake.
In a world groaning under the weight of too many vehicles and too many crowds, Samara stands as proof that the opposite is possible. That space can be created, not only consumed. And that we can return to Africa what was once taken away.
Samara does not chase applause. It does not need to. The land itself is the declaration. The animals are the testimony. Africa can be restored.
Cheetahs returning to Samara as if they never even left at all, Image Credit: David Ryan
The Landscape That Holds You
The Karoo is not a backdrop. It’s a presence. It meets you at every turn, holds you in its silence, and reminds you how small and miraculous you are.
At Samara, the landscapes shift like chapters in a story. One moment, you move through valleys carved by time. The next, you rise onto a plateau of golden grass that stretches until the earth seems to fall away.
And across these scenes walk the animals that once disappeared from them. Elephants threading the horizon. Lions stretched in the afternoon sun. Not just wildlife but history returning. Hope, walking back into the world.
A Place to Stay, A Reason to Be
The places to stay here are not built to steal the show. They are ways of belonging to the land. Manor House is a place where families and friends can feel at home while still keeping the pulse of the wild close. Karoo Lodge carries the weight of history in its beams and walls, the memory of farmland now reborn. Plains Camp waits in the southern reaches, stripped back and elemental, a way of meeting the Karoo without filter.
Yet it’s not the walls or the beds that stay with you. It’s the way the land itself holds you. The vast skies at dusk burn orange and violet. The cool mornings when mist curls through the mountains. The silence is so deep that it humbles even your thoughts.
At Samara, you don’t just visit a reserve. You become part of a landscape that breathes again. And in that breath, you find your own.
If these walls could talk, Image Credit: Samara
The Human Touch
The restoration of a place is never only about land and animals. It lives and breathes through the people who hold it all together.
Hospitality is the invisible thread that makes conservation sustainable. It may sound simple, but it is the truth. Guests do not come only for a feel-good project. They come for the goosebumps. They come for the food, the company, the stories shared under the stars. They come to fall in love with a place and with its people. And in that love, they discover a reason to support a legacy.
This is where Samara shines quietly. The team carry the heart of this reserve with them. Guides who know the land not only by map but by memory. Staff who welcome you as though you belong here. Food that nourishes more than appetite. Service that never shouts yet never falters.
Hospitality and heart make Samara special, Image Credit: Samara
The lodges reflect this spirit of connection. Manor House offers the warmth of home for families and friends. Karoo Lodge holds the history of the old farmhouse, a reminder of how far the land has travelled. Plains Camp awaits those who want to be stripped back and meet the Karoo at its raw edge.
But long after you leave, it’s not the bricks or the beds that remain with you. It’s the feeling of being held. By the land, the people, and the vision that weaves them together.
A New Kind of Luxury
Reaching Samara is not easy. The drive is long and the horizons endless. A private charter can bring you straight into the heart of the reserve, but that’s a privilege that carries its own weight. However you arrive, the truth is the same: Samara asks something of you before it reveals itself.
And maybe that’s exactly what makes it extraordinary. By the time you step onto the land, dusty and a little tired, you feel the separation. You know you’ve left the world behind. The effort sharpens the reward. You’re ready to receive what this place offers.
This view makes it all worth it in the end
Where Rarity Replaces Excess
This is conservation far from convenience. It’s wilderness intact and restored without the press of too many vehicles or the hum of mass tourism. It’s proof that what’s hardest to reach often holds the deepest value.
Luxury here is not measured by marble or chandeliers. It’s measured by silence so complete it steadies your breath. By elephants reclaiming the ground they lost for two hundred years. By the knowledge that your presence helps protect something rare.
Samara shows us a new kind of luxury. One that buys not only a bed for the night but a stake in a legacy. A share in the restoration of a continent.
Bearings Set, Forward Again
I did not leave Samara with only photographs. I left with conviction. For months, I had been wrestling with our ethos, asking again what it means to serve Africa rather than simply to sell it.
The past year had left me bruised and broken in places. And it was this land that began stitching me back together. Standing in those grasslands, watching elephants walk on the ground they had not touched in two centuries, I felt hope return. Not the fragile kind that fades, but the kind that’s earned through courage and persistence.
Samara reminded me what travel is meant to be. Not volume. Not convenience. But transformation. If what we build in tourism does not serve Africa, then it’s not worth building at all.
The seemingly impossible was made possible in Samara, Image Credit: David Ryan
The Call to a Different Journey
Travel today can still be wild, soulful and transformative – if we choose carefully. If we stand with projects that restore rather than diminish. If we walk as custodians and not as consumers.
This is the work that defines Rhino Africa. We do not simply sell safaris. We curate journeys that protect wild places and change the lives of those who travel with us. Samara is one shining example, but it belongs to a larger story. The story of how travel, done with care, can heal a continent and leave you changed forever.
If you’re searching for more than a holiday, if you’re looking for meaning, let us guide you. We won’t just plan your trip. We’ll open a map to your turning point, and take you to the Africa that restores and inspires.
