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In Conversation with Neil Whyte from Savanna Lodge
26 July 2024
Savanna Lodge: Gateway to the Kruger
The story of Savanna Lodge starts with a gold rush. Unfortunately for those who flocked there in their droves, it was a rush that produced no gold. What it did produce, though, was a railway line, one that ran through the mighty Kruger National Park and on into Mozambique, all the way to Maputo. The last station on the line, before it crossed into the wilderness of the Kruger, was on the edge of a nature reserve called Sabi Sand. When it fell into disrepair in the early ‘70s, the landowner incorporated it into the reserve and a man called Paddy Hagelthorn started a guide training school where the station had stood – and Savanna Lodge was born. To help tell its story, we sat down with Savanna’s General Manager, Neil Whyte, who knows this place better than anyone.
‘Some people think that the Kruger survived because of the railway line’, Neil says, ‘because there were no roads or cars so the only way to tour it was by train’. No gold, then, but a vital link with a national park that stakes a claim as the best in Africa, if not the world.
It’s a link that survives to this day and one that everyone at Savanna is keen to preserve. To understand why, you have to understand what the lodge was in its earliest days. It wasn’t really a lodge at all, but a guiding school called EcoTraining where the best guides in the business would learn their trade.
After a while, the training school outgrew its site (it still exists today, across much of southern Africa) and it was converted into a small lodge for paying punters. It was sold again; this time, to a small group of school friends who wanted somewhere they could go, ‘somewhere they could control the atmosphere and go on safari with their families in the later years of their lives’. From our chat, it’s clear that they’ve done exactly that. They invested heavily in Savanna, in its people and facilities, in the communities that surround them.
The result is a 5* lodge with just 9 rooms and access to ‘the best game viewing in Africa’ on its doorstep – literally. ‘We’re in the fortunate position that our owners invest our profits directly back into the lodge, the staff and the community, so we have a lot of clout for somewhere quite small’, Neil tells us. A lot of effort goes into creating an experience that goes above and beyond. It’s an experience helped by the quality of the game, which is, according to Neil ‘immeasurable’.
The animals in the Kruger are so habituated to people that they behave exactly as nature intends, however close you dare to get. Neil says that he’s seen leopards at 3 metres, which would, in other parts of the world, run a mile. ‘The proximity is our greatest privilege; we are invisible to the animals’. Neil knows, too: he comes from the bush, was born and raised in the Kruger and trained in zoology, botany and guiding and he’s been at Savanna for almost as long as it’s been under its current ownership.
Neil, together with his wife, Natasha, oversees much of what goes on at the lodge, from the guest experience (‘second to none’), to helping guides in developing their soft skills, to the community projects that the owners invest so much in.
There are 3 of these and, for a place that only has space for 18 guests at once, their scale is mightily impressive. ‘We have an elderly home that supports about 70 live in residents in the local community’, Neil says, ‘as well as a day care centre for orphans that began as a result of the AIDS pandemic’. Day care centre doesn’t really do this wonderful place justice, though, as it looks after up to 300 children a day – yes, a day – who would otherwise be unsupported and left largely to fend for themselves.
The final arm of the Savanna outreach projects is its animal welfare project, Khumba Ncila (Touching Tails), which was started by Natasha. The project’s full-time vet certainly has his work cut out, servicing 9 villages and helping to sterilise and care for typically neglected domestic animals. It’s important work, given that the local community often measures wealth by cattle numbers and it’s one that Neil says they’re looking to expand.
Expansion elsewhere is a different issue, though. ‘We will stay small, for sure’, we’re told, ‘because the ethos of the camp is all about 18 guests. It’s a number that’s small enough to feel intimate but big enough to be sociable’ and it means that guests get to know both one another and the staff at Savanna. It’s these staff members who make the lodge what it is, with a total team of 65, including a lot of couples. The result is somewhere that feels more family than hotel, and the owners make sure that they’re treated as well as anywhere. It’s clearly working, with a drastically lower staff turnover rate than elsewhere and guests that keep on coming back – one of them, 26 times.
So what next for Savanna? It’s not like they need to change: they have the finest game drives pretty much anywhere on Earth, a happy team and guests who are part of the furniture. ‘We might grow the company if the opportunity arises’, Neil says, ‘but we’re not pushing it’. There’s already a succession plan in place amongst the owners and the community projects go from strength to strength. It sounds to me as though the people of Savanna are going to keep doing what they do best: providing the best safari, from the best guides, in one of the most gorgeous lodges in all of southern Africa. And what better plan is there than that?