Expert

Philip Briggs

Member of the SafariBookings Expert Panel

Country:: South Africa
Expert Reviews:: 100 Reviews
Website:: philipbriggs.wordpress.com

Philip Briggs is a South African based travel writer with more than 20 years experience travelling in and writing about Africa. He acquired the African travel bug whilst backpacking between Nairobi and Cape Town in 1986 and has been exploring the continent on-and-off ever since. His first book was the Bradt Guide to South Africa, published in 1991, less than two years after the release of Nelson Mandela.

Over the subsequent decade, he authored a succession of pioneering Bradt Guides to destinations then uncharted by the travel publishing industry, among them the first standalone guidebooks to Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana and Rwanda. He still updates these books on a regular basis, but more recently has authored Bradt Highlights Guides to Kenya and South Africa, a Bradt guide to East African Wildlife, and a new Bradt Guide to Somaliland, published in March 2012.

He has also worked on the Insight Guides to Namibia, Tanzania, Senegal & Gambia, East African Wildlife, South Africa, Cape Town and Kenya, and various other books published by Dorling Kindersley, AA Guides, Struik/New Holland, and regularly contributes to specialist travel and wildlife magazines including Africa Birds & Birding, Africa Geographic, BBC Wildlife, Travel Africa and Wanderlust.

Philip now lives in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg region together with his wife, the travel photographer Ariadne Van Zandbergen, his son John, and three dogs and a cat.

Expert Reviews 100 – Written by Philip Briggs

Botswana

Botswana country review

4/5
The thirsty Kalahari and swampy Okavango
Central Kalahari Game Reserve

4/5
The Great Thirstland
Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park

4/5
Desert splendours
Mashatu Game Reserve

5/5
Southern Africa’s best-kept game viewing secret
Okavango Delta

5/5
Southern Africa’s greatest inland swamp

Kenya

Kenya country review

4/5
The home of the safari
Aberdare National Park

3/5
Life in the Treetops
Amboseli National Park

4/5
Giant tuskers in the shadow of Kilimanjaro
Arabuko Sokoke Forest Reserve

3/5
Home of Kenya’s largest ‘lost city’
Buffalo Springs National Reserve

4/5
Samburu’s southern twin
Hell's Gate National Park

4/5
Hike or bicycle through a valley full of wildlife
Kakamega Forest National Reserve

4/5
Kenya’s top birding site
Kora National Park

2/5
A little visited wilderness
Laikipia Plateau

4/5
Ranchland reclaimed for wildlife
Lake Bogoria National Reserve

3/5
The flamingos’ holiday home
Lake Nakuru National Park

4/5
Lake of birds and land of rhinos
Lake Turkana

4/5
The world’s largest desert lake
Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

4/5
Africa on horseback
Marsabit National Park

3/5
A forested island
Masai Mara National Reserve

5/5
Big Cat Diaries made flesh
Meru National Park

4/5
The Phoenix park
Nairobi National Park

3/5
A top safari experience bordering the capital
Ol Pejeta Conservancy

4/5
Laikipia’s main tourist focus
Saiwa Swamp National Park

4/5
Kenya’s smallest and most pedestrian friendly park
Samburu National Reserve

4/5
A river runs through it
Shaba National Reserve

3/5
Samburu’s wilder eastern cousin
Shimba Hills National Reserve

3/5
Sables, squirrels and bushbabies
Solio Ranch

3/5
Rhino overload
Tsavo East National Park

4/5
Kenya’s largest wilderness park
Tsavo West National Park

4/5
Kenya’s greatest wilderness park