Insights, tips and personal stories
LATEST NEWS & STORIES
Stay up-to-date with our latest adventures, expert travel tips, and personal stories from across the globe. Whether you’re seeking inspiration for your next journey or looking for insider advice, our stories will guide you every step of the way.
Why We Sometimes Say No When Planning Your African Safari
Planning an African safari? Discover why Compass Odyssey sometimes challenges travellers’ ideas and how honest advice leads to better, more personal journeys.
Where Next for Compass Odyssey? Looking Beyond Safari Africa
Over the years, a number of our travellers have asked whether we could arrange journeys outside of East and Southern Africa with the same Compass Odyssey approach they experienced here. Until now, we’ve largely resisted. Partly because ‘safari Africa’ thankfully keeps us pretty busy, but also because adding another country to a website is easy....
The Great Migration: Why There’s More to It Than River Crossings
Planning a Great Migration safari is one thing. Persuading a million wildebeest to follow the plan is quite another. We look beyond the famous river crossings to what the Migration is really about – and why timing, patience and a very good guide matter.
The Namib’s quiet secrets
There is a particular kind of quiet in the Namib Desert. Stand on a dune at first light and the world seems to hold its breath — an ocean of sand rolling to the horizon, the air still, the colours shifting from grey to gold to deep copper as the sun climbs. At a glance it looks like a place where nothing happens. It is also, quite simply, one of the most beautiful things you will ever see.
Safari Safety and Wellness — The Ordinary Truth
Ebola headlines can be unsettling — yet in fifty years, no leisure traveller has ever caught it on safari. The calm, on-the-ground truth about staying well in Africa.
Africa’s Greatest Gift? Its People
After many years of planning African journeys, we’ve come to realise that what travellers remember most often isn’t the lions or the landscapes. It’s the porter who asks where you’ve come from. The waiter who remembers your coffee. The guide who lets the silence settle. This is a post about the warmth that stays with you.
Kenya Beyond the Great Migration
We often find ourselves gently steering certain travellers north — not away from something, but towards something a little different. Safari, as we’ve come to know it, is not always about anticipation. Sometimes it is about space, and about allowing the experience to unfold at its own pace.
The wildlife, as you saw it
There are certain moments on safari that stay with you long after you return home. Often, they’re the ones you managed to capture — not perfectly, but honestly.
Over the years, many of you have shared your photographs with us. They’re not staged or polished. They are simply the moments that felt worth holding onto — a young giraffe stretching into a run across Laikipia, a lion stepping forward through Delta grass, a gorilla mother holding her newborn in the filtered light of Bwindi.
Made in Africa: Why a Safari Is the Most Romantic Journey of All
Planning a honeymoon in Africa? Or wondering whether a safari might be the perfect way to mark a milestone anniversary? Over the years, we’ve planned many honeymoons and anniversary journeys across East and Southern Africa, and we’ve noticed something interesting. Safari is rarely the obvious starting point. Instead, it often emerges gently in conversation — almost as a wild card. And yet, time and again, it becomes the part couples speak about for years afterwards.