Travel With Tamara | Wellness Festivals in Africa

While yoga and safari might appear to be contrasting holiday activities, they actually complement each other perfectly. After a day of game drives on Africa’s notoriously rough roads, what could be better than to stretch out your limbs with yoga?

Yoga has taken off exponentially in Africa. Yoga retreats and festivals - and even yoga teacher trainings - are springing up around the continent. These are a fabulous way of expanding your practice and making diverse new friends in a stunning place. Africa offers experiences like nowhere else. I recently ran a yoga retreat in the Masai Mara, during which I taught handstands against an acacia tree, a Masai warrior watching over us as elephants ambled past, while the team set up breakfast on the savannah.

Yoga doesn’t have to be the focus of the holiday. Many safari camps now have yoga spaces; some have a full-time yoga teacher while others engage one on request. Lots of coastal resorts now provide yoga; guests can start the day with meditation or yoga as the sun rises before heading out for kite surfing or scuba diving, or simply basking on the white sands. You can even take your yoga onto the sea with Stand-Up Paddleboard yoga, or into the trees with Aerial Yoga. Kenya’s Kilifi Wellness Festival, for example, offers SUP, aerial, laughter yoga, yin, dance and more, plus discussions on subjects as broad as nutrition, gender and forgiveness, and includes activities such as ecstatic dance, cacao ceremony, open mic and the much-loved moonrise dhow cruise (next KWF is 15^th–18^th February 2024).