The world’s first wheelchair adapted mobile safari—I went to Botswana to try it out

Our safari vehicle is listing like a ship on water, but our guide and driver, Mike Hill decides it’s the perfect moment to tell a story. Meanwhile, I’m busy mentally cataloguing possible escape routes—as a paraplegic in the middle of Botswana’s Okavango Delta, such routes are worryingly finite.

“This reminds me of the last time we got stuck in a river,” he says, with the nonchalance of a man who’s long accepted this is part of the job. “But that time there were lions circling, and there were two boys with muscular dystrophy, both power wheelchair users, stuck inside overnight until the vehicle could be dug out at sunrise.”

To be clear, for many people, this would be the definitive argument against bringing disabled travelers into such extreme environments. For the boys however, Mike says proudly, it’s still one of their favorite stories. As for him, it was just another day at the office.

For 20 years, Mike, a Botswana citizen, originally from Cape town, SA, who spent his early years in the Namib desert in Namibia, and his Italian wife, Silvia, have been creating these unforgettable, improbable moments for disabled travelers in their adopted home of Botswana through their company, Endeavour Safaris. By combining their wilderness expertise with problem-solving tenacity, they’ve grown Endeavour into Africa’s leading adaptive safari outfitter.

“I worked in safaris all my life, but I noticed no-one was catering for wheelchair users or people with physical disabilities,” Mike tells me. With no lived experience of disability himself however, Mike did something unusual. He spent months volunteering in a home for disabled people in Cape Town, learning what physical disability looks and feels like in real, practical terms. “The people I met taught me that people are often afraid of them, so I learnt not to be,” he says. “I learnt that it’s OK to make mistakes and not have the correct terminology all the time.”

When we eventually arrive at the world’s first adapted mobile safari camp, I’m stunned into silence.

He then applied the same energy and skill he used to navigate buffalo migrations, bulging rivers, or broken axles, to dismantle the barriers most people in the travel industry consider immovable.

“The first thing I knew I had to fix was the vehicle itself,” he said. “Standard safari jeeps are high-sided, and disabled guests are often manhandled to get into them. It’s unsafe, undignified and for many disabled people, simply medically impossible.”

Mike’s solution is the only one of its kind in Botswana, and Africa. His adapted safari vehicle is fitted with a hydraulic lift and a system of secure four-point restraints; this allows manual and power wheelchair users to stay in their chairs throughout game drives if they choose. For many, this is a literal game changer.

When I arrived at Botswana’s Maun Airport, the gateway to the delta, Mike was ready and waiting, I rolled straight onto the lift, and transferred easily into a seat, which is my personal preference. Within minutes, we were bound for the Moremi Game Reserve on a six-hour drive through mopane (Indigenous hardwood tree) woodland and open floodplains.

Joining us was UK tour operator Jonny May of Wild Paths, another non-disabled ally determined to expand what the industry imagines disabled travelers want and—more importantly—are capable of. A lifelong Africa obsessive and former head of Africa product at Audley Travel, Jonny recently set up Wild Paths to bring more progressive, experience-led safaris to market. He tells me that finding Mike “felt like meeting the person who had solved a problem the rest of the industry hadn’t even acknowledged.”

Any wheelchair user reading this will know the feeling of transcending the limits of our chairs and crossing into environments our bodies are not able to reach. It’s liberating, empowering, and gives us an expansion of self that everyone deserves.

The act of transferring into a safari vehicle and driving into one of the world’s most remote wildernesses is life-changing. But throw in the prospect of camping in it, as a wheelchair user, and it’s almost indescribable. This type of experience had been utterly out of reach for people like me. Until now.

When we eventually arrive at the world’s first adapted mobile safari camp, I’m stunned into silence. Mike’s hydraulic lift lowers me onto a path of thick matting, neatly laid into paths across the sand for smoother wheeling.

My tent—one of four—has been adapted with an open-air, roll-in shower, a raised bed, a shower chair positioned over the camp toilet, grab rails, space to turn with ease. In short, everything that I could need plus the open offer of any further adaptations I might require, should any stone be left unturned.

But the moments that strike me the deepest aren’t just the perfect ones. It’s the moments that reveal the truth of what authentic accessible adventure actually requires.

Every barrier between me and the camp had been removed; I can explore as freely as the elephants that wander through it. And yes, there are elephants surrounding our camp, not to mention the lone hippo that grumbles so loudly outside it immediately brings me back to my senses, a warning that the only thing separating me from one of Africa’s most dangerous animals is a canvas sheet.

This isn’t the sanitized version of safari offered by so many lodges. Suddenly, from the depths of the delta, their solid walls, electricity on demand and protective safeguards feel tame. This is raw, unfiltered, exhilarating wilderness—made accessible like never before.

For the next three days, we explore the delta on our own schedule. Mornings begin when we decide, depending on when my body needs it (the advantage of a private tour), and wildlife encounters unfold according to Mike’s instinctive understanding of the land.

One morning, we spend hours observing a leopard draped across the branch of a sausage tree, its tail flicking lazily in the heat. On another, we find a pack of endangered—and notoriously elusive—African wild dogs, dozing beneath a canopy of silver cluster-leaf trees.

The Okavango Delta, one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa, lies within the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. This remarkable inland delta covers about 2,316 square miles (6,000 square kilometers) at low water and can expand to nearly 5,791 square miles (15,000 square kilometers) at the peak of the annual flood. And everywhere, elephant herds move through the landscape with a choreography so fluid it almost feels staged.

But the moments that strike me the deepest aren’t just the perfect ones. It’s the moments that reveal the truth of what authentic accessible adventure actually requires. Like the afternoon when we return to camp in searing heat and, unable to regulate my body temperature, I have to sit in the camp shower and wash myself in delta water to cool down. Or like right now, with our vehicle stuck in this riverbed and I wonder, only semi-jokingly, whether my upper body strength is sufficient to out-swim a crocodile.

As Mike’s team come to the rescue and tow us free, it dawns on me what kind of person it takes to bring together Africa’s most powerful predators and humanity’s most vulnerable travelers. For me, these people are the last true pioneers in travel. They may not be discovering new places, but they are dismantling the assumptions about who gets to access them.

“This work is about changing perceptions,” Mike tells me later, as the sun dissolves into the delta behind a lone baobab tree. “It’s about allowing people to experience something they’ve been told isn’t for them. ‘Endeavour’ means to try with purpose, to go beyond expectation. That’s exactly what we do. No-one is immune to perhaps one day having or living with some or other form of disability. We are all human, and should be afforded the same opportunities to access the wild places in this world.”

And where leading accessible travel is predominantly about removing the physical—with ramps, lifts, adapted vehicles, etc. or digital barriers—true inclusive travel is about mindset. It’s the belief that everyone can and should be included. Inclusive travel answers questions that go beyond the barrier: ‘How do we design for dignity? For independence? For excitement and joy and equally, risk?’

What I’ve experienced encapsulates both accessible and inclusive travel. And that combination is what truly makes this adapted mobile safari the world’s first of its kind.

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