18 of the best wildlife holiday ideas
For some of us, nothing can match the thrill of seeing incredible, exotic animals in the wild. We all have different favourites, whether it's rare birds, big cats, beavers, humpback whales or elephants, and our budgets and willingness to rough it vary. Accordingly, these suggestions — from blow-out expeditions to staycations — cater to every type of fauna fan.
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If you don't succeed at first, try, try again — try 14 times again, in fact. That's the logic of Exodus's small-group tiger safaris in northern India, which offer 15 game drives across three dependable, distinct national parks (Pench, Kanha and Bandhavgarh) in the search for the iconic Bengal tiger. Despite this apex predator's endangered status, virtually every group that has taken the tour has reported sightings, usually multiple. You may also see leopards, sloth bears and monkeys, and you'll definitely get to lay your eyes on something that matches tigers for aesthetic oomph: the magnificent Taj Mahal monument.
• The best cities to visit in India• Best time to visit India: how to plan your trip• Discover our full guide to India
A trip from Wild Frontiers Travel goes along the Via Egnatia, a Roman road in the north of mainland Greece, and through the Pindus Mountains. Wildlife-wise, you will visit a sanctuary for rescued bears and, most likely, spy giant pelicans during a cruise. Flamingos are among the 300 other bird species that you will see in two days beside Lake Kerkini National Park. The trip, from an operator known for adventures, also offers culture, starting at the Unesco-listed Meteora monastery and ending at Mount Athos.
wildfrontierstravel.com
• Discover our full guide to Greece• The most beautiful places in Greece
As far as wildlife goes, Patagonia — a vast, little-populated region straddling the southernmost portions of Argentina and Chile — has a trio of headline acts, and Swoop Patagonia's Pumas, Penguins & Whales small-group tour aims to introduce you to all three. You'll look for pumas around a lagoon near Torres del Paine before taking a ferry across the legendary Straits of Magellan to a reserve supporting king penguins. Lastly, a yacht-based trip takes you to the island of Carlos III, off which humpback whales are reliably spotted. Departures run from December to March; you can stay in hotels, basic guesthouses and comfy eco-camps.
swoop-patagonia.com
• Patagonia travel: great things to do on your trip• Discover our full guide to Argentina• Discover our full guide to Chile
The Galapagos is an ever-changing carousel of wonders for children. Boobies with blue feet! Giant tortoises! Marine iguanas like miniature dinosaurs! Better still, life in this evolutionary classroom doesn't run away: it just stares back at you. After a magical jet-lag pick-me-up in Ecuador's Mashpi cloud forest, visit the neighbouring Isabela, Santa Fe and Santa Cruz islands to watch volcanoes and spot sea lions while you snorkel.
naturalworldsafaris.com
• The very best Galapagos cruises
Golden eagles over the Isle of Mull, seals by your kayak amid the skerries of Arisaig, roe deer on the Cairngorms' heather moors — the Scottish Highlands wildlife week with Wilderness Scotland is one big Facebook filler for families. Designed to be fun, not just a species count, the tour is divided between hotels in Ardnamurchan and a Cairngorms village. You will see bottlenose dolphins on a boat trip on the Moray Firth and hunker down in a moorland hide at dusk.
wildernessscotland.com
• Read our full guide to Scotland
May in Madeira means being saturated in colour, and the arrival of sperm whales offshore to feed. It is when endemic whale species calve and when Europe's rarest seabird, the Zino's petrel, breeds on cliffs. During the Birds, Whales & Dolphins of Madeira tour, Wildlife Worldwide's experts will guide you on boats and through forests to locate a spotter's book of strange species — Bryde's whales, Trocaz pigeons or Berthelot's pipits. It's a trip that's catnip to wildlife anoraks.
wildlifeworldwide.com
• Discover the best things to do in Madeira• Great hotels in Madeira
All set for a slow journey through one of the best birding locations in Britain? Three reserves lie on the trail of this self-guided, five-night walk along the flinty north Norfolk coast. Flat terrain and an average of three hours' luggage-free walking a day allows time to watch waders in the soupy shallows off RSPB Snettisham or to tick off species in the reedbeds of the Holkham and Cley reserves. Book ahead to visit the UK's largest seal colony on Blakeney Point. The accommodation includes a smart guesthouse and a country pub.
inntravel.co.uk
• Most beautiful places in the UK• Great hotels in Norfolk
The European Nature Trust (Tent) helped to curate this tailor-made tour from Steppes Travel, so you have good odds of spotting one of the world's most elusive cats. About 2,000 Iberian lynxes now roam Portugal and Spain's wildest pockets, including the latter's Sierra de Andujar range in Andalusia. Fully adaptable, Steppes' suggested itinerary involves at least one day's safari with expert guides, and privileged access to Tent's scientific work, from camera traps to conservation efforts. You can also build in olive oil tasting, waterfalls and hikes looking for vultures.
steppestravel.com
• Read our full guide to Spain• Discover the most beautiful places in SpainEurope's answer to Botswana's Okavango, the Danube Delta is a Romanian wetland larger than Coto Doñana and the Camargue combined, and home to about 300 bird species including night and purple herons, pygmy cormorants and clouds of pelicans. On Naturetrek's Danube Delta & Carpathian Mountains tour, a houseboat hotel provides a suitable base to explore swamps that extend to the Black Sea. You will spend a few days beforehand in the forests of Transylvania's Carpathian mountains, home to bears, wallcreepers and Vlad the Impaler's castle.
naturetrek.co.uk
Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula is thought to be one of the most species-rich places in the world: an estimated 2.5 per cent of the planet's biodiversity is crammed into 0.001 per cent of its area. Heaven knows why it is so little visited. Expect to spot quetzals, tapirs and hummingbirds — Osa's jaguar population is elusive — during a trip that's bound to be pure Instagram gold. The tour company Sunvil has a Birdwatching Itinerary that visits the peninsula.
sunvil.co.uk
• The best places to see wildlife in Costa Rica• Costa Rica honeymoon ideas: the most romantic places to stayIt's Europe, but only just. The Azores is a bucket-list destination for European diving, where you'll get up close to spectacular species. Moreover, they are the sort you usually have to travel long-haul for: blue and hammerhead sharks, humpback whales and enormous manta rays. Your base on Dive Worldwide's Dive Pico — Mantas & More tour is Pico, where plummeting depths and nutrient-rich seas bring the big stuff close inshore. Ten dives are included and you'll get to explore an impressive underwater labyrinth of volcanic arches and caverns.
diveworldwide.com
• Great hotels in the Azores• What to do in the Azores
To the uneducated, Dartmoor appears to be empty moorland. Nick Baker, from the BBC's Springwatch and Autumnwatch, proves otherwise over three days. There's bird-spotting and net-dipping in the Teign Gorge and a mini-safari along the River Dart, seeing butterflies in grassland and tracking otters in woods before a night safari to hear nightjars and snipe. The final day of this Wildlife Worldwide tour brings hunts for ring ouzels and rare fritillary butterflies on upland moors.
wildlifeworldwide.com
• The UK's best national parks and how to visit them
Spend 12 days accompanying a long-term study of killer whales (orcas) on the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago off western Iceland. Reached by plane or ferry from Reykjavik, it is a proper research base, so you will be slugging shots of Brennivin schnapps with scientists as part of an Icelandic island community — that's when you are not recording orca behaviour on the water, spotting puffins or preparing biopsy samples for the lab. Unesco-listed Vestmannaeyjar isn't too shabby either, with hikes to make the soul sing.
earthwatch.org
• Read our full guide to Iceland• The best things to do in Iceland• Great places to stay in IcelandElephants encountered on foot, rhinos (black and white) and sundowners on the deck — Galpin Tented Camp, available through Expert Africa, is one long TikTok opportunity for over-16s. It is a great-value place on the Kwandwe Reserve, the Eastern Cape's wildest safari experience, with sole use for groups of the posh tents. Tailor-made trips here are very much your holiday at your pace. One of South Africa's largest big-five reserves lies beyond the tent flap and all guiding is included — one helluva finale to a Garden Route holiday and just two hours from Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth).
expertafrica.com
• Best safaris in South Africa• See our full guide to South Africa
The popular Scillies are Cornwall's answer to the Caribbean. If you go in autumn warblers and chats will be flitting in hedgerows before migration and rare whimbrels will be strutting through the shallows. If you go in spring you will find grey seal pups while on a boat trip to the uninhabited Eastern Isles. Birdlife is marvellous year-round, with oystercatchers and night herons among more than 450 species. Stay on St Mary's, the main island.
ukprestigeholidays.co.uk
• Best hotels on the Isles of Scilly• Find the best UK cruises
Ancient and rustling with life, the Forest of Dean is Britain's version of rainforest, if you look at it through expert eyes. It's the home patch of the BBC broadcaster and 'wildlife detective' Ed Drewitt and his two-hour safaris winkle out its secrets. Go during the day to spot rare species such as crossbills and peregrine falcons. At dusk you will watch wild boar rootle through the undergrowth as bats flit overhead. Or join a dawn expedition to learn about forest birdsong at its most joyful. Stay at the country-chic Tudor Farmhouse Hotel, which also organises the safaris.
tudorfarmhousehotel.co.uk
Few who slurp fizz on the French Riviera realise that one of Europe's most rewarding birding destinations lies near by. From autumn until spring, thousands of flamingos join abundant birdlife in the marshes of the Camargue — the Ornithological Park of Pont de Gau is photo magic. Drive 30 minutes and you might see rare Bonelli's eagles in the Alpilles mountains. Stay in style at Le Mas de Peint, a rustic-chic eco-hotel deep within the saltmarsh, which offers birding safaris by 4×4 and on Camargue's famous white horses.
masdepeint.com
• Fantastic walking holidays in France• The most beautiful places in France (and how to see them)
Bush camps and beavers, floating saunas and wild swims — this beautifully basic forest break in Sweden from Responsible Travel is as much a Thoreau fantasy to step off the world's merry-go-round as it is a wildlife holiday. For three full days you'll go a bit wild: stalking moose, canoeing on lakes where beavers swim, foraging berries and yarning by a campfire before bedding down in a tented camp and listening to wolves howl. You'll otherwise be sleeping at Farna Herrgard, a beautiful country manor turned spa hotel, two hours from Stockholm.
responsibletravel.com
• Best things to do in Sweden
Additional reporting by Richard Mellor
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5 hours ago
- Times
16 of the best family adventure holidays
All-inclusives and easy beach holidays are all well and good, but sometimes everyone needs a proper adventure. The kind of memory-making trip that will make children gasp and squeal, and give parents moments to cherish forever. A trip involving jaw-dropping landscapes and cultures or creatures to learn about and admire. If you're into wildlife, then Kenya, Borneo or Costa Rica might be the answer. For unforgettable scenery, how about a US national park, Jordan, or Canada? New Zealand is brilliant for road trips, while the Scottish coast provides a UK option for the activity-mad. Whatever your gang's age, stage and budget, there's excitement waiting for you on one of these brilliant family adventure holidays. This article contains affiliate links, which may earn us revenue Price £ Egypt is central to the idea of adventure in many children's films, cartoons and books, and it's also an incredibly accessible, budget-friendly destination for families. You can't go wrong with a tour of the Pyramids and Sphinx, plus Cairo is home to the blockbuster Grand Egyptian Museum (don't miss the scary room of mummies) and Khan el-Khalili bazaar — which for big kids may seem familiar from the Indiana Jones films. For parents, the relaxing bit of this Encounters Travel tour is the Nile cruise aboard a traditional felucca sailboat, absorbing Aswan, the Valley of the Kings and Luxor, while other child-centric adventures include a visit to a local school and sleeper train rides from Cairo to Aswan and Luxor to Cairo. • Discover more of the world's best family holidays Price ££ Parents will fall for the all-American views at Yellowstone, one of the most spectacular national parks in the US. This Intrepid Travel tour will please younger family members with a trip to Old Faithful, the geyser that can spray up to 32,000 litres of boiling water into the air. On a visit to neighbouring Grand Teton National Park, highlights include pristine lakes and the meandering Snake River, as well as the chance to see wildlife including moose, beavers and bears. Back in Yellowstone, your pack will go wolf tracking, armed with high-power binoculars to enable you to see all the wildlife from a comfortable distance. • Best national parks in the US• Best cities to visit in the US Price £££ Sharing 97 per cent of our DNA, orangutans are homo sapiens' flame-haired cousins — and there's nowhere better to see them than on the Asian island of Borneo. The Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, within the 40 sq km Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve, allows visitors to see the primates in their natural environment and learn about the work to return orphaned or injured animals to the wild. No one-trick wonder, this trip with Exodus Adventure Travels also includes a stay in a local homestead with the Dusun people, witnessing their traditional dances and perhaps playing football on the village pitch. Round off your travels by snorkelling amid colourful fish and coral in Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park. • Read our full guide to the world's best adventure holidays• Best safari and beach holidays Price ££ Fast emerging as the most family-friendly destination in Central America and a pioneer of eco and adventure travel, Costa Rica has something for everyone. As well as offering exceptional wildlife — particularly in the cloud forests of Monteverde — it's a good pick for an activity holiday. You can go ziplining through the canopies of the jungle, riding in the nearby hills, or paddleboarding and kayaking at Lake Arenal. This Intrepid Travel tour finishes up with some time on the rich coast that gives the country its name — at Manuel Antonio tropical vegetation meets perfect beaches, where you can take a surf lesson or just flop onto the sand. • Best places to see wildlife in Costa Rica• Best places to visit in Costa Rica Price £ Emerging from a narrow canyon into the elaborate ruins of a lost Nabataean kingdom in Jordan is a moment of drama that will make families into the stars of their own action-adventure film. On this Exodus tour you will stay overnight in a Bedouin camp in the deserts of Wadi Rum — a dead ringer for Mars — wild camp amid rocky mountains and take an optional trek that ascends to the top of Burdah bridge. After visiting the ruins of the house where Lawrence of Arabia is said to have lived, the tour finishes in the Unesco world heritage site of Petra, home tothe iconic Al-Khazneh treasury and Ad Deir monastery, whose grand façades were carved from the rock and featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. • The ultimate guide to Jordan's Dead Sea: everything you need to know Price £ Every day provides a new adventure on this multi-activity holiday in the Spanish Pyrenees. Families on this Explore! tour will be based at the same hotel all week, so time saved on packing and repacking can be spent hiking and picnicking among the peaks of Aiguestortes National Park and off-road mountain biking in the Montgarri Valley. The highlights of the trip are the white-knuckle watersports — although the Noguera Pallaresa river is one of Europe's safest, it still a thrilling place to ride a raft, especially over the notorious 'washing machine' rapid. Adrenaline junkies needn't stop there, as canyoning and abseiling are also on offer. Teenagers will get the most out of this trip, although it's suitable for children as young as seven. Price £ If 'no thanks' is often the response you get when suggesting a walk to your brood, then try elevating your pitch. Mention the fact that this route involves glaciers, a white-knuckle col traverse between France and Switzerland and an overnight stay in a forgotten mountain refuge, and you are likely to get a different response. UTracks offers a Mont Blanc family guided hike from Italy that covers high Alpine ground, allowing you to eyeball the tongue-shaped Prè de Bar glacier and experience the biodiverse Aiguilles Rouges Nature Reserve. There's also no quicker way to get your kids on the move than to tell them that there's hot chocolate, pizza and ice cream along the route. • See our full guide to walking holidays Price £££ Charles Darwin's discoveries in this Pacific archipelago helped him to formulate his game-changing theory of evolution, and a trip to the islands is part family holiday, part science field trip. The human footprint here is minimal and consequently the Galapagos are spectacularly biodiverse, home to everything from sea lions to giant tortoises, iguanas to blue-footed boobies. The islands belong to Ecuador, and you'd be mad to come all this way without seeing more of this mercifully compact country; Journey Latin America's Ecuador Andes and Galapagos Islands hop also includes a visit to an indigenous market and gallery, as well as a stay at a mountain lodge in the Andes. • Best cruises in the Galapagos Price £ Staying up past bedtime is virtually guaranteed in the village of Levi, where the photogenic wooden cabins come with a partial glass roof to maximise chances of sighting the aurora borealis. But even if the northern lights don't put on a show, no-one will come home from Finland disappointed because there are so many other memorable experiences up for grabs. Guests on a Father Christmas & Aurora Hunting trip with Activities Abroad can enjoy a husky safari, a snowmobile adventure and a reindeer sleigh ride — and you needn't fork out on multiple sets of thermals and salopettes: cold-weather clothing is provided for the whole family. • Discover our full guide to Finland• Best northern lights tours Price £££ Anyone who's ever enjoyed a David Attenborough documentary has a family safari on their bucket list and the Masai Mara in Kenya is a pretty unbeatable destination for one. A huge expanse of grassland, this is the African savannah of your mind's eye, where gigantic herds of wildebeest and zebra roam across the famous reserve and beyond. Far and Wild's Kenya Family Safari Adventure provides a stay in the traditionally styled tents of Little Governors Campand guided morning and evening drives to search for the Big Five in an open-sided jeep. A two-for-one trip, this itinerary also takes in northern Kenya's Saruni Samburu, a lodge carved into the rock face with endless views and a great range of wildlife and cultural experiences. • Explore our full guide to safari holidays• Best Kenya safaris Price ££ Providing the pastoral greens of the Shire and the epic mountains of Mordor, the landscapes of New Zealand are central characters in the Lord of the Rings film franchise and they do not disappoint in real life. The relentless beauty means you will immediately forgive the 24 hours it took you to get here — but stay for two weeks, minimum, to do the country justice. On Cox & Kings' Grand New Zealand Drive you'll motor from top to tail, beginning with beachside swims in the subtropical Bay of Islands and ending with a scenic train journey through the Southern Alps — exploring everything from rainforests to hot springs in between. • Best things to do in New Zealand Price £££ Topping the charts of child-pleasing global cuisines, Italy is the country that brought us ice cream, pizza and pasta. You'll try all of the above — and learn how to make the latter — on Audley's Classic Italian Adventure, which visits Venice, Florence and Rome. Instead of full days of sightseeing, this trip features ample downtime and is tailored to engage the interests of younger travellers — a day trip to a museum or a private tour of the Colosseum will be complemented by more interactive family activities, such as a mask-making workshop in Venice or a ride around Rome on the back of a vintage Vespa. • Best things to do in Rome• Best villas in Italy with a pool Price £ You don't need to travel to the ends of the earth to have a proper adventure holiday — the Highlands are quite far enough. Wilderness Scotland has a guided four-day Sea Kayaking Holiday that begins in a sheltered bay on the mountainous west coast, and is suitable for absolute beginners as well as pro paddlers. Moving quietly through the water in either a double or single sea kayak, you'll stand a good chance of spotting marine wildlife such as otters and dolphins. As your skills improve, you can explore sea lochs and venture south to the atmospheric ruins of Castle Tioram, which sits on a tidal island. • Best hotels in the Highlands• Best road trips in Scotland Price £££ A trip to Churchill, in Manitoba, Canada, the polar bear capital of the world, delivers an exceptional wildlife experience best observed during a ride on a mighty tundra buggy. As gleamingly white as the surrounding snowy plains, these custom-built all-terrain vehicles allow visitors to safely observe Canada's mighty predator during the short October-November viewing season. Wildlife Trails' good-value Churchill Polar Bear Tour by Air includes three such tours and you'll also spend a separate day with an expert nature guide, searching for other well-camouflaged creatures including Arctic foxes, snowy owls and ptarmigans. • Best things to do in Canada• Explore our full guide to Canada Price ££ Children are prone to moaning when dragged along to a sight of historical interest, but no one is unmoved by the Taj Mahal. This stop in Agra is easily combined with other destinations in India's Golden Triangle. KE Adventure's Tigers and Temples of Rajasthan family trip ensures cultural insights are well-balanced with family adventures. You'll see old Delhi from the back of a rickshaw and spend two days in Jaipur, including visits to a local school and a Bollywood film. Breaking free from India's frenetic cities, there are also two tiger-spotting drives in Ranthambore National Park — home to real-life Shere Khans. • Read our full guide to India• The best cities to visit in India Additional reporting by Richard Mellor
Telegraph
13 hours ago
- Telegraph
Race Across the World, ep 7, review: it's time for the sob stories to take a back seat
Warning: contains spoilers Just when you thought Race Across the World (BBC One) was running on a pretty familiar road, they go and wrong-foot you. In the penultimate leg of the race, the tried and tested helter skelter to the checkpoint, the edit skipping back and forth between competing pairs as they attempted to decipher baffling directions, was thrown out the window. Because it looked like ultra-competitive brothers Brian and Melvyn, the canny old codgers of the field, were a shoo-in. But in a devious twist that I was kicking myself for not seeing coming, all was not as it seemed and the glossy sign-in hotel book had a different tale to tell – Caroline and Tom were victors of this penultimate leg. It was a clever trick to play because, however entertaining a reality format is, viewers need to be kept on their toes. The cheeky twist showed there's plenty of life left, global meltdowns and closed borders permitting, in this compelling if tricksily edited travel race. The stunning cinematography of far-flung exotic locales we take for granted by now – India, here I come – and there are only so many times we can witness flustered Brits shouting, 'How much?! What no bus for five days?!' at ticket office windows. So the twist got a thumbs up. As did the welcome return of a spot of hitch-hiking, a dying art in our paranoid times. Admittedly, it was only Caroline and Tom and Sioned and Fin who got a lift to the nearest bus station rather than attempting a daring traverse across the sub-continent, but it was good to see trust being placed in the kindness of strangers rather than suspecting danger lurking around every corner. By this point, I'm usually rooting for my favourites to win and wishing a travel itinerary débacle on the ones who've got up my nose, but this year it's a pretty even field. No real heroes, no dastardly villains, which makes a refreshing change in reality casting world. It's not all plain sailing. This former backpacker would appreciate seeing more of India and the interactions with hosting families and employers, which have largely taken a back seat this series, and rather less of the prerequisite backstories that are going round in circles. How many times do we have to be told that Laetitia is gaining in confidence or that travel has brought mildly estranged brothers Brian and Melvyn together? I'm pleased for them, I truly am, but over seven episodes, the constant leaning into the other journey the contestants are taking, exorcising the demons in their lives, is becoming as wearying as a 12-hour night bus trip. Just the idea of that makes my back sigh. When we did see the racers engage with the locals, such as Sioned and Fin tucking into a home-made biryani donated to them by a kindly Indian chap on a bus, you got the real feeling of what a buzz life can be on the road. For that alone, I'd like the young Welsh couple to take next week's prize. For this passenger, the sob stories can take a back seat.
BBC News
14 hours ago
- BBC News
BBC Learning English - Learning English from the News / Kumbh Mela: 400 million to attend world's largest festival
(Photo by Ritesh Shukla/ Getty Images) ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ The story The Kumbh Mela festival, the largest religious gathering in the world, has begun in the northern Indian city of Prayagraj. 400 million people are expected to attend throughout the 45-day period, authorities say. The festival can be seen from space. The Hindu festival is held once every 12 years, but this year it's particularly significant because of a rare alignment between the Sun, the Moon and Jupiter, which happens only once every 144 years. News headlines India's Maha Kumbh Mela festival gets under way for first time in 144 years The Guardian India's Maha Kumbh festival sees 15 million people take holy dip on first day Reuters Kumbh Mela, explained: Its mythology, history, astrology, and why millions flock to it The Indian Express Key words and phrases under way in progress You can't enter the venue once the concert is under way. dip a brief swim After hiking all day, a quick dip in the lake felt amazing. flock move in a crowd Tourists flock to the city every summer. Next Learn more English vocabulary from the news with our News Review archive.
