The Best Wildlife Travel Destinations for 2026

Serengeti · Tanzania

The theatre of the Great Migration

The Serengeti ecosystem spans roughly 30,000 square kilometres across Tanzania and Kenya’s Maasai Mara and carries the largest mammal migration on Earth: about 1.5 million wildebeest, 200,000 zebra and 350,000 gazelle in a continuous clockwise circuit. The Mara River crossings from late July to October are among the most concentrated wildlife events anywhere.

It supports the largest lion population in Africa, around 3,000 animals, alongside leopard, cheetah, hyena and African wild dog. One correction, because it is repeated everywhere: the highest lion density is in the neighbouring Ngorongoro Crater, not the Serengeti. The southern Ndutu area is a different trip from January to March, with roughly 400,000 calves born in about three weeks and predators gathering in numbers.

Extraordinary Journeys plans private Tanzania safaris →

Okavango Delta · Botswana

Africa’s inland river delta

The Okavango is the world’s largest inland delta, between 15,000 and 22,000 square kilometres depending on the season, fed by a river draining from the Angolan highlands. The water arrives between May and August, and the mokoro, a dugout canoe poled through reed channels, is the defining experience alongside 4x4 game drives through shallow water.

Botswana holds the world’s largest elephant population at roughly 130,000 and the Delta is its core habitat. The distinction matters, because the national figure is routinely attributed to the Delta alone. UNESCO records 482 bird species on the property, which is a World Heritage site.

Extraordinary Journeys plans private Botswana safaris →

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest · Uganda

The mountain gorilla experience

Bwindi holds roughly 459 mountain gorillas, close to half the confirmed global population of 1,063, with the rest in the Virunga Massif across Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC. A new Bwindi and Sarambwe census completed fieldwork in October 2025 and results are pending, so expect these numbers to move. Mountain gorillas are the only great ape whose numbers are increasing.

The trek is two to eight hours through montane rainforest at 1,500 to 2,500 metres, ending in a strictly controlled hour with a habituated family. Permits are capped at eight visitors per family per day and cost $800 in Uganda or $1,500 in Rwanda. Uganda also sells a $600 low-season permit in April, May and November, which is non-refundable and cannot be rescheduled. Peak permits sell out six to twelve months ahead.

Extraordinary Journeys plans private Uganda trips →

Madagascar · Indian Ocean

The eighth continent

The world’s fourth-largest island at 587,041 square kilometres, and the most biologically distinctive country on Earth. It separated from Africa 160 million years ago and from the Indian subcontinent 88 million years ago, and around 90 per cent of its wildlife is endemic. The 107 recognised lemur species are the best-known group, from the mouse lemur to the indri. Over half the world’s chameleon species live here, alongside leaf-tailed geckos, the fossa and the baobab forests of Morondava.

The familiar “90 per cent of forest lost” line traces to discredited colonial-era estimates. The defensible figures: roughly 40 to 50 per cent of forest cover has gone since the 1950s, and under 15 per cent of the island is now natural forest.

Extraordinary Journeys plans private Madagascar trips →

Borneo · Malaysia & Indonesia

The last stand of the orangutan

The world’s third-largest island at 748,168 square kilometres, shared by Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, and one of only two places where wild orangutans survive. The Bornean orangutan is critically endangered, with roughly 104,700 individuals left, a decline of more than 50 per cent over the past sixty years, driven mainly by habitat lost to palm oil.

The visit centres on Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo, at Sepilok, the Kinabatangan River and Danum Valley, or on the Indonesian side at Tanjung Puting, where the klotok river boat is the format. Beyond orangutans: proboscis monkeys, pygmy elephants, clouded leopards, hornbills, and Rafflesia arnoldii, the world’s largest flower at over a metre across.

Extraordinary Journeys plans private Indonesia trips, Borneo among them →

Pantanal · Brazil

The world’s largest tropical wetland

The Pantanal covers around 195,000 square kilometres of seasonally flooded plain in west-central Brazil, extending into Bolivia and Paraguay. It is the world’s largest tropical wetland and roughly thirty times the size of Everglades National Park. It holds the highest recorded jaguar densities anywhere; the highest measured is at Taiamã, while Porto Jofre on the Cuiabá River is the most reliable place to see one. Boat-based watching from June to October delivers near-certain sightings, often several animals in a day.

Beyond jaguars: giant river otters, capybara, tapir, anaconda, caiman, more than 650 bird species, and the hyacinth macaw, the largest flying parrot in the world at a metre long, though the flightless kākāpō outweighs it.

Extraordinary Journeys plans private Brazil trips →

Galápagos · Ecuador

Where the theory of evolution was born

The Galápagos sit 1,000 kilometres west of mainland Ecuador and protect 7,665 square kilometres of land plus a marine reserve that was expanded to 198,000 square kilometres in January 2022 with the addition of the Hermandad reserve. Most published guides still give the old 138,000. Darwin’s five weeks here in 1835 produced the observations behind natural selection.

Endemism is among the highest on Earth: 80 per cent of land birds, 97 per cent of reptiles and land mammals, 30 per cent of plants. The animals evolved without land predators and do not treat people as a threat. Marine iguana, giant tortoise, blue-footed booby, flightless cormorant, and the Galápagos penguin, the only penguin found north of the equator.

Extraordinary Journeys plans private Ecuador trips →

Yellowstone · Wyoming, USA

America’s most complete predator-prey system

The world’s first national park, established in March 1872, protecting 8,983 square kilometres of volcanic plateau and, since the wolf reintroduction of 1995 to 1997, the most complete predator-prey system in the contiguous United States. The Lamar Valley is the best-known wolf-watching ground, where the Druid Peak pack and its successors produced some of the best-documented wild wolf behaviour on record.

Beyond wolves: grizzly bear, now estimated at around 1,030 in the Greater Yellowstone monitoring area under the current model, not the long-quoted 700; roughly 5,300 bison; elk, pronghorn, bighorn sheep and mountain lion at low density.

Churchill · Manitoba, Canada

The polar bear coast

Churchill, on the western shore of Hudson Bay, is the best-known place to watch wild polar bears at close range, as they gather along the coast each October and November waiting for the sea ice to form. The tundra buggy, with its raised viewing platforms, is the usual format.

The numbers need correcting. The Western Hudson Bay subpopulation stood at 618 bears in the 2021 aerial survey, down from 949 in 2011, a decline of roughly a third in a decade. Figures of 900 or more still circulate widely, including on official tourism pages. Around 4,000 beluga whales also gather in the Churchill River estuary from mid-June to mid-September, alongside Arctic fox and snowy owl.

Costa Rica · Central America

Five per cent of the world’s biodiversity

Costa Rica covers 0.03 per cent of the planet’s land surface and supports approximately 5 per cent of its biodiversity, a result of sitting between two oceans and two continents across several altitude bands. Protected areas cover more than a quarter of the country.

Tortuguero hosts the largest green turtle nesting population in the Atlantic. Corcovado on the Osa Peninsula is the old-growth rainforest park with all four monkey species and the best tapir density. Monteverde is the cloud forest with the resplendent quetzal, and Manuel Antonio is the accessible Pacific park with sloth, monkey and coati.