For Arseniy Lozhkin and the R-Express team · October 2026
Not tours. Living chapters.
Four journeys through Southern Africa in 2027, each built around a season and a reason to be there, and hosted by me from the first evening to the last morning.
1995established
30+ yearsguiding across Southern Africa
300+safari camps visited
6,000+ dayson the road
80countries travelled
Dear Arseniy, and the R-Express team
Thank you for our conversation on the 30th, and for the care you and your colleagues have put into this from the very first email. A working document rather than a courtesy note, senior people on the call, and a clear idea of what an author-led journey should be: that is rare, and it is exactly how I like to work.
Your clients can already buy a good holiday in South Africa. What they cannot buy anywhere else is the country as I know it. Visitors to Africa is small on purpose. I host every journey myself, and everything here is built from places I know first-hand and people I have known for years. Much of it cannot be bought from a brochure, because it was never in one.
Below are all four chapters, each written out day by day, the moments that make each one what it is, a few films worth five minutes of your time, and answers to the practical questions. I have kept the days deliberately light for now. I would rather hear from you first: what appeals, what does not, which level suits your clients, and what you would change. Then I will add a great deal more to every day.
St Petersburg is my other home, where I have a residence with my Russian wife, and it is where I spend every day I have between journeys. A Russian-speaking guide travels with every group, so your clients will never be far from someone who speaks their language, and I know the life they come from.
Each journey is built around the month it runs in, and each is written out in full, day by day, before anything is sold.
February
The Cape, hosted
Ten days at the turn of the harvest, hosted by me in person, with the sea warm enough to swim and the mountain still light at nine. The flight over both oceans, Constantia on foot by the roads I ran as a boy, a wine blended by the group under their own label at the farm my great-grandfather named, horses in the surf at Pearly Beach, and a Karoo sky with an astronomer and nobody else.
10 days · 20 February to 1 March · up to 12 guests · from $9,700
For clients who want more or less, the same journey can also be travelled privately or as an essential version.
April
For the families
Nine days built around what children remember rather than what adults photograph: a working dairy at first light, horses in the surf, a morning helping at the seabird hospital, and a sky with nothing in it. Malaria-free throughout.
9 days · 3 to 11 April · up to 14 guests · from $4,200
A malaria-free safari at Nambiti, two nights under the Drakensberg, then up the Sani Pass into a kingdom almost no operator enters, where I worked for the better part of four years. Lunch on a summit no one has eaten on, and the falls at Semonkong from the air.
12 days · 17 to 28 April · up to 10 guests · from $6,950
The whales first: three nights on Walker Bay, where I live, as the southern right whales come in to calve, with a silent boat and a hydrophone. Then up the West Coast I was born on, to the lagoon at Langebaan in flower and a shore where the human story runs back 117,000 years. We end in Cape Town, with the mountain and the Peninsula. Sanbona, Nambiti or Lesotho can follow.
9 days · 18 to 26 September · up to 12 guests · from $4,050
The Cape is shown at its Hosted level, with Privately above it and Essential below it as alternatives; every other chapter is offered three ways. The experiences are identical at every level; only the beds, the transport and the meals change. The figures are net to R-Express, per person sharing, at twelve guests: the Cape at the Hosted level, the other chapters at the entry level. They are working figures built on today’s supplier rates and my best estimate of 2027, and nothing, neither price nor itinerary, is confirmed until it is agreed and signed between us.
Eleven moments you will not find in a catalogue
Around each journey sits everything you would expect of a great trip to this part of the world. These are the parts that make each one unrepeatable. Each is arranged privately, and each carries an alternative held in reserve for the day the weather has other plans.
February · Cape Town
The summit at sundown
Up Table Mountain ahead of the queues, a walk along the top, and a table set privately as the sun goes into the Atlantic.
February · the Peninsula
Swimming with penguins
Not the boardwalks. A small beach near the famous colony, known mostly to local people, where the birds come and go around the swimmers. I grew up there before the fences went up.
February · Stellenbosch
A wine of their own
The press running at harvest, then a family cellar and a blend the group makes themselves, bottled under their own label and sent on to them.
April · the Drakensberg
Over the Sani Pass
Up into Lesotho by 4x4 on the most dramatic road in Southern Africa, and a night at the top, on the roof of the continent.
April · Lesotho
A table on an unnamed summit
A peak no road reaches and no path climbs. White linen, and lunch carried up before the guests arrive. Each journey is given its own mountain. Horsemen in their blankets on the way home.
April · Semonkong
The falls from the air
Maletsunyane drops 192 metres into a gorge most travellers will never see. We fly over it. Elsewhere in the highlands, guests spend time with Basotho families I came to know over four years.
September · Walker Bay
Hearing them, not only seeing them
A small boat for the group alone, engines cut and a hydrophone over the side, so guests hear the whales beneath the hull as well as see them.
September · the West Coast
Flowers to the sea
In a good year the daisies run down to the lagoon in white, purple and orange. They depend on the winter’s rain, so I say plainly that some years are better than others.
September · Walker Bay
A shore no road reaches
Sopiesklip has been my family’s for sixty years: my father’s, mine and now my son’s. A morning there, among the rocks and the pools, with the people whose place it is.
February · Constantia and the Winelands
The back roads of the wine estates
This was my playground as a boy. I lived on the edge of Klein Constantia from the age of eight, and trained as an athlete on the gravel roads between the estates. We take those roads, through the vines and past the old cellars, not the main road between tasting rooms.
On foot · the mountains we know
The paths we walk ourselves
Not the routes every visitor is sent on. The paths we walk ourselves: over the mountain behind Hermanus, along ridges above the vineyards, and in the high country of Lesotho, at a pace that leaves time to stop and look.
Langebaan · 1969
The boy by the rock is me.
Years later, footprints left in the sand 117,000 years ago were found beside it. In September, your clients cross the lagoon at first light, before any vehicle can reach the bay, to stand where she walked.
Author-led, and in Russian
You describe your journeys as author-led. So are ours, in the most literal sense: I wrote every day of these four chapters, and I will be there for every one of them.
Russia is not a market to me. It is my other home, and my wife’s country. So I know what your clients will notice here, what they will love, and what they will miss from home.
Three things make them different. The first is access: a family cellar, a shore no road reaches, families in the mountains of Lesotho, a museum opened after dark. The second is time. You told me there were too many early mornings, so every day now begins at ten, except the mornings when the animals or the balloon decide otherwise. The third is honesty. I say plainly what we have arranged and what belongs to the weather and the animals, so your team only ever promises what will happen.
Where I come from is part of it. I was born on the West Coast at Langebaan, grew up on the edge of the Constantia vineyards, and live in Hermanus, on the bay where the whales come in. My great-grandfather renamed a wine farm in Stellenbosch in 1928. A stretch of shore near Hermanus has been my family’s for sixty years. None of this is in a brochure. It is simply where I take people.
Guests at this level are given a great many things. Almost none of them are written.
So some weeks after they fly home, a parcel arrives: a book of their journey, which I write myself, as I wrote September Tides, illustrated with their own photographs and with their names in it. It can be printed in Russian.
Films worth five minutes
A few films I would like you to see. Some are of places on these journeys. Others say more about how I work than anything I could write.
The questions your team asked, and a few I would ask in your place.
Net, not commission
Every price is net to you
You told me you work on net rates. Every figure is net to R-Express, per person sharing, at 12, 10, 8 and 6 guests, with singles shown separately. You add what you need. Some of the most special places give no trade discount, and some of the houses we use are not advertised at all; where that is so, I will tell you.
Your clients’ budgets
Three levels, one journey
Most of your clients travel in the middle segment, so the middle and entry levels are built around the budgets you gave me. The top level adds exclusive-use houses and helicopters. The experiences are the same at every level.
The first day
Arrival, the room and dinner
As you asked, the first day is for landing, settling in and dinner, nothing more. I meet every arrival myself.
Language
Russian, throughout
A Russian-speaking guide travels with every group, from the first arrival to the last departure. Briefings, and the book at the end, can be in Russian.
Lunch and dinner
Included where they matter
Meals that are part of the experience, such as the summit lunch or the restaurant taken for the group alone, are always included. Ordinary restaurant meals can be in or out, as you prefer; we can agree that together.
Malaria
None, unless you want it
All four chapters are free of malaria. That is why there is no Kruger in April, although it was in your brief: the Big Five are at Nambiti instead. April is a low-risk time and I travel there often, so it is easy to add back.
From the aircraft door
VIP arrivals
We can arrange for the group to be met at the aircraft and taken through a separate channel, with the bags collected for them. At the top level, a helicopter can take them straight to the house.
Same price, same room
We check before we confirm
When every guest pays the same, every guest expects the same room and the same view. We check this for every group before we confirm, so there are no surprises on arrival.
The weather
An alternative for every moment
The whales, the flowers and the mountain weather keep their own diary. Every special moment has a second plan held in reserve, so a cloudy day is a different day, not a lost one.
Getting here from Russia
From Moscow and St Petersburg, the flights connect through Istanbul, Dubai, Doha or Addis Ababa into Cape Town, or through Istanbul, Dubai, Doha or Abu Dhabi into Johannesburg for the April chapter.
I make this journey myself four or five times a year. My own preference is through Istanbul, and otherwise through Dubai.
South Africa is only one hour behind Moscow. After a long night flight there is almost no jet lag, and guests are ready for the first evening.
Russian passport holders can visit South Africa for up to 90 days without a visa. For the April chapter we will confirm Lesotho’s entry rules well before anyone books.
How I work
The best way to see how I travel is September Tides, my book of thirty days on the road in Southern Africa, written as it happened: whales beneath the Hermanus cliffs, a walk over the mountain into Hemel-en-Aarde, mornings on the Keurbooms River and nights on a koppie far to the north. Every chapter is a real day with real guests.
More than twenty-five years ago I was already working with Russian colleagues. From 2000 to 2002 I organised the first flights carrying scientists from Cape Town to Antarctica, working with the Novolazarevskaya base and landing Ilyushin aircraft on a blue-ice runway. Until then the journey took a month by sea. It says something about how I like to work: find a better way, then go and do it properly.
From 2002 to 2005 I worked closely with a businessman living in Moscow and spent a great deal of time there. When he wanted to thank the people closest to him, he brought them out to South Africa, and I hosted them. Over the years I have welcomed travellers from all over the world here, Russians among them, so your clients will not be the first.
In the Winelands with that group, in the early 2000s.On a game drive with that group, in the early 2000s.
I do not normally show photographs of my guests, and I never do without their permission. These are shared with you for this proposal alone.
I have also spent more than 250 hours in Air and Sea Rescue operations in South Africa. I travel with every group myself.
What comes next
Tell me what you would change. Anything in the programme can be changed, and I would rather agree the rates with you than simply send them to you.
With your notes, I will add the full detail to every day and confirm the figures with each supplier for 2027. I know you hope to begin selling by the end of October, so I will turn your notes round quickly.
Until we speak again, please ask me anything at all, by email or on WhatsApp.
