Originally Posted by Smiley90

Bumping this because we've now looked into it quite a bit and are closer to booking! Have also spoken to friends who've been and they've heavily recommended Lion Sands, but... That might be at the very very upper end of our price range.

We're currently mostly leaning towards doing 2-3 nights at one lodge and then 2-3 nights at another, probably a bit away. The obvious choices that came to mind were Kirkman's & Ngala Tented Camp (or the Lodge) since they're both &beyond properties so organizing everything might work better & cheaper and we'd get sights of both Sabi Sands & Timbavati.

The other option would be either by ourselves or using a travel agency stitch together stays in different reserves - I know some of the ones you've praised such as Shindzela would be at the top of our minds for that (and with the savings over Ngala we might be able to eke out something else elsewhere).

Do you (or anyone else reading this) think two parks (e.g. Timbavati & Sabi) in 5-6 nights might be too ambitious and we'd have plenty of variety if we did, say, 5-6 nights at two different camps within the same park? (e.g. 5-6 nights at 2 camps in Sabi or 2 camps in Timbavati) Or is that a perfectly reasonable approach? Would love to hear your thoughts on some other properties that are maybe in the 500-750USD/pp/night range (with the &beyond packages just topping out at that scale)!

edit: also looking into combining it with a further-away second location like Phinda Vlei/Marataba/Madikwe, but that might be too logistically troublesome (and my partner might scalp me if I put her into too many small airplanes...)