Sophie meets: Mike Hill of Endeavour Safaris

Twenty years ago, Mike Hill looked around the safari industry and noticed that something was missing. “ I had worked in safari’s all my life,” he told me, “when I suddenly realised that no one was catering for wheelchair users or people with physical disabilities.” Beyond a missed opportunity, Mike felt he had a responsibility to change this. For the past two decades, he has been taking wheelchair users out into the wildest places in Southern Africa. What is perhaps surprising is that he had no personal connection to disability when he started. He was unafraid to learn, however, and spent months volunteering at a home for disabled people in Cape Town, absorbing as much as he could about physical disability in practical terms. The insights that followed were transformational. “The people I met told me that most non-disabled people are often afraid of them,” he said. “So it was simple, really. I learnt not to be.”

Aside from this mental barrier, Mike also recognised that there are two physical factors that determine whether a disabled traveller can participate in a safari: transport and accommodation. Control those and you level the playing field. The only thing out of your control is the wilderness itself, but therein lies the excitement for all travellers, regardless of physical ability. So, Mike built both his transport and accommodation from scratch. First, he adapted a safari vehicle by installing a hydraulic lift and four-point wheelchair restraints – making it the only one of its kind in Africa. Then he created a mobile tented camp with roll-in showers, raised beds and paths laid across the ground for smooth wheeling.

Pretty soon, he had created the world’s first adapted mobile safari camp. When I visited Botswana’s Okavango Delta last year with Endeavour Safaris and experienced both for myself, it was extraordinary. The vehicle meant I could access the bush with dignity and independence, and the camp more than met my needs. The rest – be it elephants wandering through, a hippo grumbling outside my tent at night or the accessible shower utilising water from the delta – was just the wild and unfiltered reality of a mobile safari. Mike has taken guests with MS, muscular dystrophy, spinal cord injuries, acquired brain injuries, people who use ventilators, stroke survivors and elderly travellers with limited mobility. He has spent 20 years making the impossible possible, and his ambition hasn’t dimmed. “Making safaris accessible to people who never thought they could do it – that’s the highlight for me,” he told me. “But here’s the moral of the story: the world will only change when more disabled people travel. You need pioneers. So my message is simple: travel, travel, travel.” On that particular point, I could not agree more.