Niassa Special Reserve Classic Safari

Overview

Niassa Special Reserve is one of Africa's last truly wild places — a staggering 42,000 km² of untrammelled wilderness in Mozambique's remote north, larger than Switzerland and one of the largest protected areas on the continent. This is a landscape of vast, rolling miombo woodland punctuated by dramatic granite inselbergs that erupt from the plains like the backs of sleeping giants, all threaded by the sweeping Lugenda River and its tributaries. Niassa protects Mozambique's most important wildlife populations: thousands of elephant, significant numbers of lion, leopard and the endangered African wild dog, alongside sable and roan antelope, buffalo, and its own endemic subspecies — the Niassa wildebeest and Boehm's zebra.

Birdlife is prolific, with over 400 species including the localised Stierling's woodpecker and pel's fishing owl along the rivers. Because Niassa is so remote and so vast, it receives only a handful of visitors each year, and the few exclusive camps offer an experience of profound solitude and authenticity — game drives and walking safaris where you may not see another vehicle for days, and nights under some of the darkest, most star-filled skies in Africa. For the seasoned safari-goer seeking the road less travelled, Niassa is the ultimate frontier.