The oldest meaning of the word, and still the best answer for a seventh safari

What a mobile camp is

Proper tents, proper beds, a mess tent and a bathroom, erected at a site before you arrive and struck after you leave, with a crew moving ahead to build the next one.

The standard varies enormously by outfit. At the top end it is indistinguishable from a good fixed camp except that it is somewhere no fixed camp is allowed to be. At the simpler end it is a bucket shower and a long drop, and that version is honest about itself.

Why people choose it

• Location. A mobile camp can sit where no permanent structure may be built, which on the right land means genuinely nobody else.
• Exclusivity by default. It is your camp. There are no other guests, because the other guests would have to be invited.
• Route freedom. It follows a plan built around you rather than a fixed address — useful for migration timing, useful for photography.
• Novelty for the experienced. It is the standard answer for somebody who has done six trips and wants the seventh to be different.

What it costs and why

A private mobile camp costs what a small hotel costs, because that is what it is: staff, vehicles, equipment and a crew, all dedicated to one party.

It scales well with numbers. For two people it is expensive; for eight it becomes comparable with good fixed camps and buys a great deal more. Some operators run set-departure mobile trips where you share the camp with strangers, which reduces the cost substantially and removes most of the point.

Fly camping

A fly camp is the light version: one or two nights away from a main camp, with a bedroll under a mosquito net, a canvas bathroom dug for the night, a fire and dinner cooked in front of you.

It is usually walked or driven to in the afternoon and left the next morning. You carry almost nothing, because the crew has gone ahead with what little there is.

Almost nobody books a whole trip of this, and almost everybody who does two nights of it remembers those two nights above all the others. It is the cheapest upgrade available to how a trip is remembered.

Where it is possible

On land that permits it, which in practice means a private conservancy, a community conservancy whose lease allows it, or a concession. National parks do not, with very few exceptions.

That is why fly camping appears on Laikipian and southern Tanzanian itineraries and almost never on a northern-circuit one — a tenure constraint rather than a fashion.

Who should not do it

Anyone who will not sleep. It is a real consideration and not a character flaw: a bedroll under a net with hyena somewhere nearby is a great deal for one night and an ordeal for four.

Two nights inside a comfortable fortnight is the shape that works for almost everybody. A whole trip of it is for people who already know they like it.