Davening at Dawn, Lions at Dusk: A Day in the Life of a Kosher Safari

Forget the brochure language. Here is what one ordinary, extraordinary day actually looks like, hour by hour, on a kosher safari — a composite of how our typical lodge day runs.

5:15 a.m. A knock and a soft “good morning” at the tent. Outside it’s still dark, and the bush is mid-conversation — francolins shrieking, a hyena finishing the night shift somewhere east. Coffee and certified rusks are already out on the deck (the kitchen has been up longer than anyone).

5:40 a.m. Shacharis k’vasikin, give or take a hippo. The group gathers on the viewing deck — a minyan when the trip has one, confirmed long before anyone packed — as the sky goes from charcoal to rose; netz over the bushveld is a real argument for davening at sunrise. Tallis bags go back to the tents; binoculars come out.

6:15 a.m. The morning drive. Cold air, blankets on laps (you packed layers — right?), and the tracker on the front seat reading the road like a daf. This morning it’s lion tracks, fresh, heading toward the riverbed. Forty minutes of following spoor and then — there. A pride sprawled on the sand, cubs climbing a tolerant male. The vehicle goes silent except for camera shutters and one involuntary “Mah rabu ma’asecha.” Nobody argues with the bracha.

9:30 a.m. Coffee stop in the bush — flask coffee, kosher biscuits, a view, and the guide explaining termite mounds with the enthusiasm of a rebbe with a good Tosafos.

10:30 a.m. Back to camp and into brunch, which is where guests grasp what a kosher safari kitchen actually means: shakshuka, fresh breads, salads, smoked fish — produced in the middle of nowhere, under supervision, without an asterisk. Questions about how get answered with a kitchen tour. (Or read the answers here.)

12:00 p.m. The blessed dead zone. The bush sleeps through midday and so should you: siesta, the plunge pool, a sefer on the deck while elephants drink eighty meters away. A shiur happens at 1:30 for whoever wants it — attendance is suspiciously good for vacation.

3:30 p.m. Mincha, then high tea (the kitchen does not believe you could be hungry yet; the kitchen is wrong, you are), then the afternoon drive rolls out into the gold hour.

5:50 p.m. The dusk shift change. Day animals bed down, night animals clock in, and the guide parks at a waterhole as the sun performs its nightly exaggeration. Sundowners — kosher wine and biltong on the hood of the Land Cruiser (yes, local kosher wine) — and then, on the slow drive home, the spotlight finds a leopard draped over a marula branch like she’s posing. She is.

7:30 p.m. Maariv under actual stars — the Milky Way you’ve davened about your whole life, finally overhead.

8:00 p.m. Dinner in the boma: firelight, a braai that justifies the entire flight, and the day’s sightings re-litigated in detail (“it was this close” — it was not, but let him have it). Bentching by lantern light. Somewhere past the fence line, a lion calls — that low, chest-deep whoomph — and the table goes quiet to listen.

10:00 p.m. Escorted back to the tent (unfenced camp; the escort is not theater). You fall asleep to the same hyena starting his next shift, and your last conscious thought is that the wake-up knock is in seven hours and you cannot wait.

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And then Friday comes, and the whole rhythm bends toward candle lighting, and the day described above turns out to have been the second-best day of the week. That one has its own story.

This is one day. Multiply by a week, set it in the right season, and you understand why guests cry at airports.

Come live this day →

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Frequently asked questions

Is davening with a minyan really part of the daily schedule? When the group makes a minyan, yes — shacharis before the morning drive, mincha and maariv slotted into the rhythm. Whether your trip will have one is checked and confirmed in advance, never assumed.

Is the schedule mandatory? Nothing is — skip a drive, sleep in, stay at the pool. The day above is what’s on offer, not what’s enforced.

Is it exhausting? Pleasantly. The siesta is structural, and nobody has ever needed a vacation from this vacation.