A safari is an overland journey, usually a trip by tourists to Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

. Traditionally, the term is used for a big-game

Big Five game

The phrase Big Five game was coined by white hunters and refers to the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot. The term is still used in most tourist and wildlife guides that discuss African wildlife safaris. The collection consists of the lion, African elephant, cape buffalo,...

 hunt, but today the term often refers to a trip taken not for the purposes of hunting, but to observe and photograph

Photograph

A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...

 animals and other wildlife

Wildlife

Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative....

.

Etymology

Entering the English language in the late 19th century, the word safari means "long journey" in Swahili

Swahili language

Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...

. Originally from the Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

 سفرة (safra) meaning a journey
The verb for "to travel" in Swahili is "kusafiri", the noun for the journey is "safari". These words are used for any type of journey, e.g. by bus from Nairobi

Nairobi

Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...

 to Mombasa

Mombasa

Mombasa is the second-largest city in Kenya. Lying next to the Indian Ocean, it has a major port and an international airport. The city also serves as the centre of the coastal tourism industry....

. The person generally attributed to having used the word in English is Sir Richard Francis Burton

Richard Francis Burton

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his...

, the famous explorer.

The Regimental March of the King's African Rifles

King's African Rifles

The King's African Rifles was a multi-battalion British colonial regiment raised from the various British possessions in East Africa from 1902 until independence in the 1960s. It performed both military and internal security functions within the East African colonies as well as external service as...

 was 'Funga Safari', literally 'Halt the March', or, in other words, stop work for the day.

Funga safari, funga safari.
Funga safari, funga safari.
Hamari ya nani? Hamari ya nani?
Hamari ya Bwana Kapteni,
Hamari ya keyaa.

Which is, in English:

Halt the march.
Halt the march.
On whose orders? On whose orders?
On the order of the boss captain,
On the order of the KAR.

On Kenya's independence from Britain, Funga Safari was retained as the Regimental March of the Kenya Rifles, successor to the K.A.R.

Today there are many operators throughout the African continent offering different levels of safari service, from lodge

Safari lodge

A safari lodge is a type of tourist accommodation in southern and eastern Africa. Lodges are mainly used by tourists on wildlife safaris, and are typically located in or near national parks or game reserves....

 based tours, where clients travel between lodges or tented camps often by air, fly in safaris where clients will meet the camps and staff after travel by plane or helicopter, to the true Mobile Safari operation where the clients travel with the Guides, staff and equipment from site to site. The Mobile Safari offers guests a genuine safari experience, and they are often very ecologically friendly as they allow areas to regenerate and wildlife do not become as habituated to human presence as they may with a permanent lodge or tented camp.

History

In 1836 William Cornwallis Harris

William Cornwallis Harris

Major Sir William Cornwallis Harris was an English military engineer, artist and hunter.-Life and career:...

 led an expedition purely to observe and record wildlife and landscapes by the expedition's members. Harris established the safari style of a not too strenuous rising at first light, an energetic day walking, an afternoon rest then concluding with a formal dinner and telling stories in the evening over drinks and tobacco.

Literary genre

Jules Verne

Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...

's first novel Five Weeks in a Balloon

Five Weeks in a Balloon

Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen is an adventure novel by Jules Verne.It is the first Verne novel in which he perfected the "ingredients" of his later work, skillfully mixing a plot full of adventure and twists that hold the reader's interest with...

published in 1863 and H. Rider Haggard

H. Rider Haggard

Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire...

's first novel King Solomon's Mines

King Solomon's Mines

King Solomon's Mines is a popular novel by the Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party...

published in 1885 were best sellers in their day(relevance?).

Cinema genre

The safari provided countless hours of cinema entertainment in sound films from Trader Horn

Trader Horn (1931 film)

Trader Horn is the first non-documentary film shot on location in Africa. The 1931 movie tells of the adventures of real-life trader and adventurer Alfred Aloysius "Trader" Horn on safari in Africa. It featured many authentic shots of African wildlife and a great deal of inauthentic plot. It was...

(1931) onwards. The safari was used in many adventure films such as the Tarzan

Tarzan

Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...

, Jungle Jim

Jungle Jim

Jungle Jim is the fictional hero of a series of jungle adventures in various media. The series began in 1934 as an American newspaper comic strip chronicling the adventures of Asia-based hunter Jim Bradley, who was nicknamed Jungle Jim...

, and Bomba the Jungle Boy film series

Film series

A film series is a collection of related films in succession. Their relationship is not fixed, but generally share a common diegetic world. Sometimes the work is conceived as a multiple-film work, for example the Three Colours series, but in most cases the success of the original film inspires...

 up to The Naked Prey

The Naked Prey

The Naked Prey is a 1966 adventure film starring Cornel Wilde, who also directed and produced. It was released by Paramount Pictures. Set in the South African veld, the film is a wilderness survival story loosely based on the experiences of explorer John Colter, who was pursued by Blackfoot...

(1966) where Cornel Wilde

Cornel Wilde

Cornel Wilde was an American actor and film director.-Early life:Kornél Lajos Weisz was born in 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary , although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City...

, a white hunter, becomes game himself. Also, safaris and the safari genre films were parodied in the Bob Hope

Bob Hope

Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...

 comedies Road to Zanzibar

Road to Zanzibar

Road to Zanzibar is a 1941 Paramount Pictures comedy film starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour, and marked the second picture in the popular "Road to …" series made by the trio....

and Call Me Bwana

Call Me Bwana

Call Me Bwana is a 1963 farce film starring Bob Hope and Anita Ekberg, and directed by Gordon Douglas. It is largely set in Africa. It is the only film made by EON Productions which is not about the Ian Fleming spy character, James Bond and was made by most of the same film crew as Dr...

. An instant 15-minute helicopter

Helicopter

A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...

 safari was shown in Africa Addio

Africa Addio

Africa Addio is a 1966 Italian documentary about the end of the colonial era in Africa. The film was released in a shorter format under the names "Africa Blood and Guts" in the USA and "Farewell Africa" in the UK...

where clients are armed, flown from their hotel and landed in front of an unlucky and baffled elephant

Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...

. Out of Africa

Out of Africa

Out of Africa is a 1985 romantic drama film directed and produced by Sydney Pollack, and starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. The film is based loosely on the autobiographical book Out of Africa written by Isak Dinesen , which was published in 1937, with additional material from Dinesen's book...

has Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton travelling, with Denys refusing to abandon home comforts using fine china and crystal and listening to Mozart recordings over the gramophone while on safari trip. Tourists must also have appropriate clothing such as hats, long-sleeved shirts and blankets for when the night gets very cold.

Safari style

There is a certain theme or style associated with the word, which includes khaki

Khaki

This article is about the fabric. For the color, see Khaki . Kaki, another name for the persimmon, is often misspelled "Khaki".Khaki is a type of fabric or the color of such fabric...

 clothing, belted bush jackets, pith helmet

Pith helmet

The pith helmet is a lightweight cloth-covered helmet made of cork or pith...

s or slouch hat

Slouch hat

A slouch hat is a wide-brimmed felt or cloth hat with a chinstrap, most commonly worn as part of a military uniform. It is a survivor of the felt hats worn by certain 18th century armies. Since then, the slouch hat has been worn by military personnel from many nations including Australia, Britain,...

s, and animal skin patterns—like leopard's

Leopard

The leopard , Panthera pardus, is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera, the other three being the tiger, lion, and jaguar. The leopard was once distributed across eastern and southern Asia and Africa, from Siberia to South Africa, but its...

 skin. There is also a term of safari chic that followed the film Out of Africa . This not only included clothing but also interior design and architecture.

Modern safari

Safaris have today diversified considerably from the initial fledgling expeditions of the pioneering European explorers and colonialists. Tourism is becoming an increasingly prevalent economic factor for many Southern African nations, in several regions surpassing traditional industries such as agriculture. Lending to specific conditions such as relative infrastructure or inherent geography countries such as Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

, Botswana

Botswana

Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana , is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. The citizens are referred to as "Batswana" . Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966...

, Zambia

Zambia

Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....

, Namibia

Namibia

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...

, Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

 and South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 advertise locally specialised safari experiences ranging from Guided Safaris, Mobile Safaris, Walking Safaris and Fly-In Safaris to more niche concepts including Elephant Back Safaris, River Safaris, Primate Safaris, Horseback Safaris, Balloon Safaris and Accessible Safaris for those with disabilities..

External links

• WorldBank: "Saving the safari industry", regarding safari workers and AIDS/HIV, May 23, 2006