If you haven’t been on safari, let me describe a game drive to you. You pile into a LandCruiser sporting your best Eliza Thornberry look. You meet the guide who’ll reveal themselves to be so kind and accommodating, you’ll be tempted to send them Christmas cards for years ahead. Then, you bump around the savannah searching for remarkable wild animals to ogle through your binoculars. You will feverishly try to snap documentation of each species on your iPhone or camera with a telephoto lens you never read the instructions to.
You will also, in all likelihood, be in the company of honeymooners and multigenerational families who are wondering when the Champagne toast will come out. Which is why my friends and I were considered a wild card on our group trip to Kenya. Most people who book a safari wait for a major milestone to warrant the price tag of this kind of trip, but we’d decided to gift it to ourselves this year.
It wasn’t completely out of nowhere. My friend Lauren had just finished grad school with a master’s in social work, a hard-pivot career achievement, and the rest of us—Tanya, Vera, and myself—were burnt out on life. We were desperate for the excuse to indulge in a fabulous vacation. After comparing the places none of us had been yet, narrowing our list down to destinations boasting good weather in February (the month we were all free for a 10-day trip), we landed on a safari in Kenya followed by a few days of suntanning (and sunburning) on the island of Lamu, and an Afropop-fueled weekend out in Nairobi.
We could also feel that, at this juncture in our early 30s, the seasons were changing quickly around us. We were still free of great responsibility, like children or mortgage payments. We’d been friends for years, experiencing the rollercoaster of life and work together, but the web of our shared lives already spanned high school, college, stints living abroad, and a number of international trips. And the thing about bucket lists, I find, is that many people spend more time compiling them than checking things off. We figured, why wait? We’d take any excuse to do our first safari, and we weren’t holding off for our honeymoons.
So, we booked round-trip flights to Nairobi.
We were giddy from the moment we first arrived at Angama Mara, a pinch-yourself safari lodge overlooking the Masai Mara game reserve. (And, incidentally, where the iconic “Out of Africa” picnic scene was filmed.) At the first sun-downer, it became clear: they really don’t get many “girls trips” in these parts. Every guest was gathered in one place—the draw of gin & tonics and grilled meat universally irrestible—and we could size up other members of our five-star hotel herd. As we eyed couple after couple, we realized that people were leaving seats beside us as they filled into open camp chairs around the crackling bonfire.
We motioned to a big family crowding in—go on, take those seats!
One of the women (here to celebrate her husband’s retirement), looked at me doe-eyed. “Oh we figured you were saving them for your hubbies!” Like the Witches of Eastwick, we stared blankly back.
We stuck out amid the sea of two-tops in the restaurant, where a smattering of couples leaned over their breakfast spreads and stared serenely into each other’s eyes. Because our trip fell during the Masai Mara’s low season, we already had the staff’s full attention wherever we went within the peaceful lodge—a woodsy space with sweeping views of the safari reserve and the animals, which from afar looked like toys from a cereal box, moving across the savannah below. A gaggle of four women, we were impossible to miss. Quickly we were on a first name basis with most staffers in the lodge, including the guards who escorted us to our rooms at night lest a confused hyena come flying out of the woods at us.
On game drives, we were the only group that didn’t share our LandCruiser with other travelers. It was probably just how the math worked out. With the low season and all, there were plenty of cars for the number of guests. But we developed a theory that we were too fun to place with the others—courtesy of what we believed to be our witty quips about the zebras (thiccest animal on the grasslands) and shy boy giraffes.
On other trips to the wilderness, I’ve heard that you shouldn’t anthropomorphize animals while observing them. Allegedly it’s a scientific faux-pas that gets in the way of us truly understanding other species. Yet as our guide Patrick would point out that, say, the female lions do all of the hunting for the pride, while the dudes rest much of the day, we couldn’t help it.
“So if you were to see them on a dating app, the male lions would have something in their bio about what “feminists” they are?” one friend joked. We would later watch two lionesses stalk and slaughter a baby warthog, then observe as one drowsy lion sauntered over and helped himself to the carcass. He was clearly exhausted from the great effort of interrupting his nap beneath an acacia tree by doing so.
Whenever there was a lull in the conversation, someone would toss in a “I’m so glad we took this trip” or, to even greater appreciation from the crowd, an anecdote of a family member who couldn’t believe that we had actually planned a safari with friends. As we passed our binoculars around to observe an elusive white rhinoceros, or toasted when Patrick broke out ice-cold Tusker beers during a rest stop, these musings about the importance of traveling with friends always found their way to the surface.
Safari is so much of watching the world around you, but the magic solidifies when refracted through the people you’re with. When we rolled to a stop to watch a baby elephant practice its roars and charges under a mother’s tutelage, I glanced over to see Tanya with her hand over her mouth, giddy. As we sat, silent in wait, allowing a leopard to slink through the low, tawny grass beside our vehicle, I could hear Lauren inhale in anticipation. When we couldn’t find a jaguar in any of the trees, even after Patrick broke a real sweat trying for us, Vera broke the silence with a perfectly timed joke.
We constantly took photos, passing around a disposable camera that Tanya had brought, grinning stupidly as water buffalo defecated upwind from us. We were already nostalgic for our present. At night, when tiny, furry hyraxes would scamper across the canvas roof of our room, we would open one eye, turn to our roommate, and whisper, Did you hear that? like we were 12 years old at a sleepover again.
In the two years since our trip, a lot has changed. Particularly in our romantic lives. An old flame was rekindled. A long-distance relationship converted to an in-the-same-place one. There were a few breakups, and a divorce. Two weddings happened on two different continents. New Hinge profiles were made, then reviewed by the group. Someone’s “getting back out there” turned into a pretty good thing.
Through it all, our friendships have remained stable, packed tighter with memories. And so, so many photos of us straddling the border between Kenya and Tanzania on a game drive. (Patrick thought it was a great shot and we couldn’t argue with him.) When life feels wobbly, my friends are a crucial part of my foundation. In a sense, this trip was an investment in them; just like earthquake-proofing your house, or making sure your home bar is always stocked. You put your time and money into the things that will take care of you in the long run. It’s easy to default to a romantic relationship for that, but it can take a more conscious effort to keep your friends on equal footing as life throws one curveball after another. At least that’s what I hear—to me, it’s a no-brainer.
After the trip, people continued to ask about our big adventure and how it came together. There was one group of people who always delighted in hearing the story, but never sought an explanation for how it came to be. They were older women—aunts, or grandmothers, and people with more life under their belts that I met at work events. When I told them that I had gone on a safari with three girl friends, they were the ones who smiled knowingly and simply said, Now those are the best kinds of trips.
