The Best Singita Lodges in Africa, 2026

High on a hill above the Serengeti's endless plains, Sasakwa is Singita at its most grand — an Edwardian-style manor and ten cottages, each with its own plunge pool and uninterrupted views across the Grumeti reserve to the horizon. Parquet floors, vintage collectables and a tennis court lend the feel of a private estate rather than a safari camp.

The location is extraordinary: the Grumeti concession borders the western Serengeti, and the Great Migration usually arrives around June. Game drives, guided walks and hot-air-balloon flights over the plains are all part of the experience.

Faru Faru is Sasakwa's contemporary sibling — lower-slung and set along the Grumeti River, with a café-style bar at its heart that spills out to two swimming pools and a firepit.

It is the choice for travellers who want the same Grumeti wildlife and the migration on their doorstep, but in a more relaxed, barefoot register than Sasakwa's grandeur.

Reimagined in 2020 by Cécile & Boyd and GAPP Architects, Sabora is a tented camp out on the open Serengeti plains, its nine tents set close to the ground behind full-length glass, looking onto grassland grazed by wildebeest and zebra. Each tent has its own meditation deck, an outdoor sala with daybeds and a private fitness area.

Because it sits out on the plains rather than by the river, Sabora puts you closest to the migration when the herds are moving through, and you hear the plains all night.

The one that started it all. Ebony opened in 1993 as the first Singita lodge, on a private stretch of the Sand River in the Sabi Sand — the reserve synonymous with the world's finest leopard viewing. Refreshed in April 2024 by GAPP, Hesse Kleinloog and Cécile & Boyd, it now opens its suites up with canvas and glass, and its wine cellar has moved onto a deck over the river.

The Sabi Sand's open traversing rights and dense predator populations mean sightings here — leopard above all — are among the most reliable and intimate anywhere in Africa.

A short distance from Ebony on the same river, Boulders is the more contemporary, architectural lodge: twelve glass-walled suites, each with a heated private pool and a deck shaped to the curve of the Sand River. The same superb Sabi Sand traversing and the same expert guiding team apply.

Boulders suits travellers who lean modern over classic. It takes children from the age of ten, so families with younger children are better placed at Ebony.

Within Singita's private 33,000-acre concession inside the Kruger National Park, Lebombo is its most architectural lodge — glass-walled suites on a ridge above the N'wanetsi River, with elevated decks where you can sleep out under a mosquito net. The 2026 refurbishment added a Wine Pavilion, a Conservation Lounge and a Gallery of Treasures.

The concession's exclusivity means a vast wilderness shared with only a handful of guests, and the Lebombo hills give the landscape a drama distinct from the flatter Sabi Sand.

Lebombo's intimate neighbour, Sweni hides among riverine forest on the banks of the Sweni River — just seven suites, making it one of Singita's smallest and most private lodges. Each suite is open-plan, with two bathrooms and an outdoor shower overlooking the river.

It is the choice for a couple or a single family seeking near-total seclusion within the same exclusive Kruger concession as Lebombo.

At the foot of the Virunga volcanoes, on the edge of Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park, Kwitonda is Singita's gateway to mountain-gorilla trekking — one of the most moving wildlife experiences on earth. Its eleven suites of volcanic stone and woven bamboo look out toward the peaks, with private decks, fireplaces, and heated plunge pools against the highland chill.

True to Singita's ethos, the lodge sits on former farmland being replanted as a buffer for the gorillas' forest: 250,000 saplings went in within a year of opening, from local community nurseries and its own Akarabo Nursery.

The least-known and, to many, the most special. Pamushana crowns a sandstone ridge in the private Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve in south-eastern Zimbabwe — vast, dramatic, and almost entirely to yourself. Its eight suites, each with a plunge pool, look out over Malilangwe Dam and a wilderness of sandstone outcrops, mopane forest and baobabs, with ancient rock-art sites to visit.

Malilangwe's low visitor density and its serious conservation work — including one of Africa's most important rhino populations — make Pamushana a safari for the connoisseur who has seen the rest.

One of Singita's newest and most exclusive addresses, opened in June 2024 on the Grumeti reserve in the western Serengeti. Milele — 'forever' in Swahili — is a single exclusive-use villa of five expansive suites, taken as a whole for up to ten guests, with its own private chef, guides, safari vehicles and staff, an infinity pool and uninterrupted views over the plains.

It is the answer for a family or group who want a private wing of the Serengeti to themselves, on the same Grumeti wilderness — with the Great Migration usually arriving around June — that makes Sasakwa and Faru Faru so sought-after.

Singita's northern outpost: six tents on the Mara River in the Lamai, 98,000 acres at the Serengeti's northern tip, open from June to mid-January. Relaunched in 2023 in olive greens and earthy browns, it runs off the grid on its own solar system, and every tent has a private deck and a bathtub overlooking the river.

The river is the reason to come. The migration's crossings typically fall between July and October, and with only six tents the camp fills early for those months. It takes guests aged ten and over.