Safari

by Geoffrey Kent

  Prince Charles knew his boys had fun when they travelled with me, but now he was saying something more: there wasn’t just anyone with whom he’d send Harry off on holiday. In the most traumatic and high-pressure period in their family’s life, he was entrusting the safety and well-being of his son—probably the most sought-after thirteen-year-old boy in the world—to me.

  Of course I will take Harry somewhere, I tell him. I didn’t want him to worry about a single thing. When we hang up, I call Caroline. “We need to create an itinerary that starts out at Kilimanjaro Airport.”

  “But Geoff, remember when Joan Rivers travelled to the Serengeti? Even there, the tribesmen recognized her.”

  “I set that up as a spoof, remember?” In 1994, a Masai tribesman stopped Joan Rivers and cried, “Joan Rivers?! What are you doing on safari?” Joan was a comedienne. I knew she would get such a kick out of that . . . but for Prince Harry, we would go absolutely airtight and low-profile. “Geoff,” Caroline continued. “The Royal Family love East Africa. Tanzania is one of the first places the press will suspect that Prince Harry will travel.”

  “I know,” I told her. “That’s why I’m taking him to Botswana.”

  It was in 1968 when I first went down to Botswana to visit an old friend, John Kingsley-Heath, who was known widely as a big-game hunter in East Africa, and also here, much farther south, in Botswana. I’d known John for many years, and he’d been a helpful resource when I was building our tented safari business.

  On that first journey, it took me about three weeks to drive from Nairobi down into Maun—at the time a tiny little village with nothing more than an airstrip and a hotel with eight rooms, Riley’s Hotel. Botswana was known to have some of the best game in the world. However, the purpose for our meeting was different: John Kingsley-Heath wanted me to bring photographic safaris to Botswana. “Geoff,” he said, “you have the vision to do this.”

  So I did it. From the very early days of our business, Botswana has always been one of the very best destinations for gameviewing. Because of my knowledge of the country I knew that I could plan an incredible safari where no one would see Prince Harry.

  I draft a false itinerary for a holiday in Tanzania and work with our PR agency in London to leak the decoy schedule to the press. The media goes berserk, many of them travelling to Kilimanjaro, camping out with their cameras, waiting for the moment Prince Harry would arrive.

  Meanwhile, when we land in Maun (a slightly more bustling tourism hub in 1997 than it had been in 1968), there are only five of us—safe, sound, secluded, and secure: Prince Harry and his schoolmate Charlie Henderson, an armed policeman, and the prince’s longtime nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke, and me. The only others present were the lions and giraffes.

  With a camera and binoculars in hand, Prince Harry is in his glory. For three days we cruise in an open-top Land Rover to view the animals. We canoe and fish in the Okavango Delta—home to thousands of elephants, rare bird species, and plenty of lions and leopards.

  But there is something else that really hooks me on Botswana. We meet an American, Doug Groves, who has devoted his career to a trio of orphaned elephants—two females, Thembi and Marula, and Jabu, a male. I feel a tug at my heart when Doug tells me, “Geoffrey, they’ve got no home. They’re just wandering around, and they refuse to leave one another.”

  It strikes me right then, in the presence of Prince Harry, that life is not a dress rehearsal. There’s no better time than now to begin to shape the legacy I’ll leave behind. Somehow, I tell myself, one day soon, I will build these elephants a sanctuary.

  When Prince Harry leaves me, he is all smiles . . . though, I have to admit, maybe that’s because he and Charlie Henderson are on their way to see the Spice Girls in Johannesburg.

  {Ian Johnson}

  Sanctuary Baines’ Camp was designed to blend into the surrounding environment.

  I too am on to my next venture. First, I met with Ian Khama, then Vice President of Botswana (who became President in 2008). Ian had trained at Sandhurst and he flew me in a private army helicopter to scout potential areas where A&K could build a camp. “Gosh, I’d love to do something on Chief’s Island,” I tell him, referring to the area known as “the predator capital of Africa.”

  “Alright,” Ian said. “I’ll arrange for you to bid on the Mombo concession as long as you provide the right design, which is eco-friendly and provides employment with a financial return to the local community.”

  We discuss a camp that has too much land for one company to run, and it happens to be located in an area that I know has some of the finest gameviewing anywhere in the world. I meet with Prince Charles, who influenced me with his ideas about design and sustainability, described in a 2013 profile in the Telegraph. Journalist Charles Woods describes the impact His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales has had on society, noting: “[Prince Charles] believes that what people eat, how they grow it or rear it, what they live in, the language they use, the art they produce, how they pray and how they look after one another and care for their health, all relate.” I have always viewed him as an others-oriented leader and he taught me that great things can be achieved for the world with the right focus.

  {Ian Johnson}

  Doug Groves with Jabu, Thembi, and Marula.

  I want to understand how we can design a camp and leave no footprint. Prince Charles puts me onto some of the world-class architects he knows. Jorie and I, still together at that time, work closely with his contacts to compile a sizeable book, about two inches thick, full of concepts centered on a commitment to ecotourism. The whole lodge will be built out of canvas, wood, and thick rope and we will source the furniture regionally—all of it completely eco-friendly. We were the first to build a safari camp with a swimming pool years ago in Kenya, and once I secure all the right concessions, we feature pools at our Botswana camps too: the swimming pool is shipped in, two plastic halves that fit together. The design makes it possible for us to move the entire camp and leave nothing behind, apart from the basin in the workshop area for the Land Rovers’ oil, which we are conscious to discard appropriately.

  Although we bid against many companies, we are awarded the concession to develop Chief’s Camp on Chief’s Island. We share the concession area with one other camp, each of us limited to twelve rooms apiece. So only a maximum of 48 guests can be in an area of 74,131 acres at any one time. We also secure land in NG32, a 302,457-acre concession next to the Moremi Game Reserve. Here we build Stanley’s Camp, and we work with Doug Groves to move Thembi, Marula, and Jabu to this land and provide them with a safe home, where clients can appreciate and help protect them.

  A second camp—Baines’ Camp—is built on raised platforms that allow guests to look out over the Boro River. We use sustainably grown wood and recycle aluminum cans that we purchase from the surrounding community. My favorite feature is the star beds—beds that can be wheeled out onto your private deck to sleep out under the night sky.

  There is also another property I have my eye on: several unsightly A-frame bungalows that overlook the Chobe River. Their design is completely unimaginative, but the property has one of the best views in Botswana, not to mention the wildlife: elephants, hippos, crocodiles, and unbelievable birds. This area, Chobe, has the highest density of elephants in Africa, over seventy thousand, and we will own the most coveted site.

  During the building of Chief’s Camp, I have one of the most dangerous experiences of my whole career happen. I had flown in late; travelling nonstop from Los Angeles to London to Johannesburg to Maun, I arrive at camp dead tired. I pull out my sleeping pills and put one huge one beside me. Should I take one and have a lovely sleep? I think, finally deciding, No. I’m so tired; I’m going to go to sleep without it.

  I pull the mosquito netting around the bed and fall asleep. Then suddenly, in the middle of the night, I wake up to a horrendous noise: an animal roaring and chewing, no more than twelve feet from my ear. I reach out for my torch and shine the light through the m
osquito net, but it reflects the light and blinds me. I switch it off.

  Now, it was pitch black, except I could see that the shape of a head had bitten its way through the screen door. At first, I thought it was a lion, but I didn’t know what it was. I use the horn that is provided in case guests need to attract attention in an emergency.

  But the animal doesn’t move. Its head is actually caught in the screen.

  I jump out of bed, taking my pillows with me, and throw them at the grunting and snarling head. Then I pick up and hurl a heavy coffee table book. Only when I get up close do I recognize the animal: it is a hyena, one of the deadliest carnivores, which can even take down a hippo in one swift attack.

  I have a flashback to the time I travelled with Myles Turner, the famous game warden in the Serengeti. We’d heard two Peace Corps volunteers had camped out one night, and when one of them woke up the next morning he found his friend next to him—dead. His head was completely bitten off, only his neck was left, and the survivor never heard a thing. (The hyena has one of the most powerful bites in the animal kingdom, around one thousand pounds of pressure per square inch.)

  I haul off and smash the thing again.

  I know one of two things will happen: it will lunge forward and eat me alive, or it will finally make a reluctant exit. Thankfully, the hyena had gotten its head stuck in the screen and had no choice but to edge farther backward and turn around, trolling off into the night.

  When the staff arrives to check on me in all the chaos, I learn the animal had been making appearances around camp and something seemed wrong with it; it would have to be destroyed.

  It was a wake-up call. I knew how close I’d come to the end: if I had taken that sleeping pill, the hyena would have attacked me and I would have ended up like the Peace Corps volunteer—headless.

  Despite that frightening episode, I am committed to making Abercrombie & Kent the best in Botswana. So we replace the screen doors with something much more solid and get back to work. We increase security with guards around all of our camps.

  I persuade the owner to sell the A-frame bungalows overlooking the Chobe River to me. The minute the ink on the deed is dry, I call Jeff Squire, the Welsh former pro rugby player and Managing Director of A&K in Southern Africa. He is a get-it-done guy hired to manage our camp development in Botswana and I tell him: “Bulldoze them, Jeff.”

  Then we start to build the beautiful Chobe Chilwero lodge.

  Here we would have our own boat on the Chobe River, where we cruise every afternoon and evening. On these trips, there is a spot that has a rather full-circle kind of significance for me, that links my present to my past: we pass the lodge on the water’s edge where Richard Burton married Elizabeth Taylor . . . for the second time.

  We hire Gavin Ford, an amazing naturalist and guide, to create a safari circuit—the best of any travel company in Botswana. Where our competitors simply build a camp, we develop the experience first, then build the camp around it.

  However, naming the camps remains a continuing struggle. Our competitors lead with their brand name and then call their camps something generic, like the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club. We decide to turn that convention on its head by putting the camp’s title first and our brand name second, so the formula is: Chief’s Camp, Abercrombie & Kent. We quickly realize, though, that other tour operators aren’t keen to promote and sell our camps, since A&K is a direct competitor to many of them.

  {Garth Hovell}

  Sunset at Sanctuary Baines’ Camp where you can sleep out under the stars and be one with the animals.

  We need to innovate; to market the camps in a completely different way. These, our first sustainable camps in Botswana, deliver an experience that others don’t. I think about my own emotional ties to Botswana—Prince Harry, the three vagabond elephants—and it comes to me. From beast to royalty, we provide a refuge from the storm of everyday life. We decide to call them “Sanctuary Retreats.”

  The idea behind them is based on creating a holistic experience with true sustainability. We provide guests with “Luxury, naturally.” Each Sanctuary Retreat reflects the unique character of its location, and some are developed in partnership with the surrounding community. Our idea is that everything should be sourced locally, providing employment to the people who are so willing to share their lives with our guests and who benefit considerably from the money that tourism brings to their communities. As I write this, there are sixteen Sanctuary Retreats throughout East and Southern Africa, plus river cruisers that take clients deep into the heart of Myanmar, China, and Egypt.

  And so, through Abercrombie & Kent’s multiple companies, we are committed to a triple bottom line of environmental, economic, and social responsibility.

  In 2013, Bill Gates publishes an essay in Wired magazine in which he shares how his first safari twenty years earlier with his then soon-to-be-wife, Melinda, shaped the goals of the Gates Foundation. “We went on a safari to see wild animals,” Gates wrote, “but ended up getting our first sustained look at extreme poverty.” Months before the trip, Gates invited me to Seattle to help him brainstorm a vacation somewhere unlike anywhere he’d ever been.

  “Where do you think you would like to go?” I asked him.

  “Geoffrey,” Bill Gates said, “if you wanted to know anything about software, I’d be the person to ask. I heard that if I have a question about travel, you’re the one to ask. What would you suggest?” I designed a safari unlike any that had ever been done before and would be difficult to replicate.

  “I know just where I’ll send you,” I told him, knowing that our staff in Africa will deliver a top-shelf experience. We planned an itinerary flying by amphibious plane all the way from Ethiopia to Tanzania and Kenya, including Kichwa Tembo, our camp in the Masai Mara at the time. Ultimately, that trip helped to spark the Gateses’ “catalytic philanthropy” model, which leverages financial investment to yield a bottom line not of profit, but of the greatest benefit to those on the receiving end of a given contribution. The Gates Foundation has driven advancements in developing countries, most prominently in Africa, for widespread disease prevention, agriculture, hygiene, and education. Today, it is the world’s largest private foundation that has given millions of dollars in aid to Africa.

  When my parents and I went into business in 1962, to most people in the developed world, travel was a treat. Today, it is a way of life as well as a way of changing lives: Travel and tourism is the most important service industry in the world and the biggest provider of jobs and a key economic driver. More than two hundred thirty-five million people worldwide are employed in travel and tourism. This represents over 8 percent of all employment and nearly 9.5 percent of world gross domestic product. The tourism industry significantly boosts employment and contributes to economic recovery and expansion.

  Early on, I recognized that for long-term success, the tourism industry needs to operate with sustainability as a major focus. Through industry groups like the World Travel & Tourism Council, of which I am a founding member and served as chairman for six years, we’re finding more and more ways to enrich the lives of travellers, our company, and the people in the places we visit.

  All of this has certainly enriched my life. In 2010, I marry Otavia. She has as much energy and embraces adventure as much as I do, and very often in the company of close friends, together we’re experiencing the very best that the world has to offer. My vision for the next leg of my company’s journey reflects this particular stage in my life. Clients today travel with us because they want the ultimate experience. They still want the most exciting and exclusive safari . . . but they also want to go to Coco Chanel’s apartment in Paris and have it specially opened for them. They’d like to shop inside Louis Vuitton’s boutique at an hour when it’s closed to the public. They want Victoria’s Secret models at their dinner parties . . . and we make all that happen. As I edit this book in late 2014, I’ve just returned from one of our Around-the-World by Private Jet journeys, and we
’ve launched a Land Rover Adventure Travel program. As a whole, our super luxury business is on fire: supervillas, superyachts, private jets, partnerships with companies such as Christie’s and NetJets. That’s where we are today.

  In our early days, we found opportunity in places where one couldn’t drink the water, and today, in still-developing countries, A&K provides clean wells so that the local people can drink the water. We’re known as the first to have rebuked the traditional hunting safari in favor of the photographic safari, and we’ve gone to great effort not to disrupt the wildlife or environment where our clients travel—in fact, one of my most important initiatives is the project on which I’m collaborating with my close friend Ted Turner to save the endangered Bonobo apes. Sharing 98.7 percent of our DNA, Bonobos, along with chimpanzees, are the closest relative to humans. Another important focus is the United Nations’ Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP), on which I’m working with Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and for which I’m on the leadership council of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Having grown up with wild animals as neighbors (sometimes too close for comfort, as one will have read in many of these stories), their well-being is one of my most avid concerns.

  We will also continue to partner with local communities, building hospitals and schools, while conserving forest resources, which is a major priority for our company. Kenyans say that the number of trees you plant during a visit is the number of years in which you have to return for another visit. They also say that to dirty your hands in African soil and then to rinse them over the tree you plant is a blessing that your tree will grow stronger and healthier than its neighbors.