22-05-2025
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.
• 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.
• 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.
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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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
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.
• 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.
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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.
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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.
• 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).
• 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.
• 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.
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.
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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.
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Additional reporting by Richard Mellor
