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Image courtesy of RETURN Africa
A soft crunch of dried brush beneath your boots.
A hint of the Limpopo and Luvuvhu rivers drifting through fever trees. Somewhere ahead, a spurfowl calls. The air is rich with the scent of the warming earth. Your footsteps stir the dust – but not just the dust. They stir something deeper.
Each step moves through more than just bushveld – it moves through memory.
Image courtesy of Sinamatella
A landscape that remembers
In Pafuri, the trails are older than any map. These are the tracks of elephants and eland, the paths of the ancients who built the stone-walled citadel of Thulamela, and of the Makuleke who lived with this land long before borders were drawn or lodges imagined.
To walk here is to enter a living archive. The stories aren’t written in books – they’re carried in birdsong, in the posture of trees, in the stillness between breaths.
“For me, Pafuri stirs memories of childhood adventures, learning our culture and history from our elders, exploring the land, and watching the world come to life around us.” – Matimba Ezaya Chauke, a RETURN Africa guide
These memories don’t live in the past. They walk beside you. The land is not just scenic. It is sacred.
Image courtesy of Kim Paffen
A safari that slows you down
On foot, the wildness reintroduces itself. You’re not an observer up high on a safari vehicle; you are immersed in the rhythm. You notice the subtle sway of grass where a bushbuck passed moments before. The cicada’s click. The warmth of basalt or sandstone beneath your palm.
Then, a moment of intensity. An elephant steps into your path – wise, enormous, curious. Every ripple of its ear, every breath from its trunk, becomes immediate and unforgettable.
“There is an undeniable thrill when one of these giants approaches. These encounters demand absolute respect and stillness.” – Vongani ‘Bongs’ N’waila, a RETURN Africa guide
Without the hum of an engine, silence becomes sacred. Walking safaris aren’t about chasing sightings. They are about being still enough to be seen.
Image courtesy of Marcus Westberg
Walking camps rooted in place
RETURN Africa’s Nkula Walking Camp and Hutwini Walking Camp offer the rare chance to experience this ancient landscape with nothing but canvas, stars, and story between you and the bush.
Nkula, nestled near the Luvuvhu River, invites you to rest in the shade of mahogany trees, where elephants have passed for centuries. From Hutwini, just south of Hutwini Gorge, cast your eyes across the river and up through the branches of great baobabs to the mysterious ruins of Thulamela. Imagine the whispers of an iron-age settlement, its strange rituals, beliefs and rain-making ceremonies.
Both camps are intimate, unfenced, and deeply rooted in the land, offering immersion and quiet reverence.
They are not simply places to stay, but experiences to remember.
Hutwini Walking Camp. Image courtesy of RETURN Africa
Knowledge passed down, step by step
Many of our guides’ parents and grandparents were raised in Makuleke villages that dotted the Pafuri landscape. Their understanding of this place isn’t simply studied – it’s inherited.
They were taught which indigenous plant, shrub, bark, or bulb to chew for fever, which trees hold water after rain, and which places must be approached with reverence.
These aren’t just lessons, they’re rituals, still alive and practiced.
As one of our returning guests stated, ‘every walk is an offering of insight, of connection, of stories that don’t make it into guidebooks.’
To walk with them is to walk through generations of memory.
Image courtesy of RETURN Africa
Land returned, stories continuing
This land was once taken from its people. The Makuleke were forcibly removed under apartheid, displaced from their ancestral home. But they returned. And they continue to return, not only physically, but spiritually, emotionally, and generationally.
Today, the Makuleke co-steward this land alongside RETURN Africa and SANParks. This is more than conservation. It is reclamation. Restoration. A reminder that true safaris should honour the past as much as they explore the present.
“A walking safari through Pafuri isn’t just an adventure. It’s a journey of transformation. If there’s one wish every person should have, it should be to undertake a pilgrimage to Pafuri on foot. The more you RETURN, the more you are transformed.”- Alweet Hlungwani, a RETURN Africa guide
This is walking in the footsteps of the ancestors. Not in imitation, but in honour.
Image courtesy of Anthony Ochieng
The path ahead
You stop beneath a towering nyala tree. The air is still. Your guide raises a hand, not to warn, but to listen. A hyena whoops once in the distance and disappears.
And for a moment, the land holds you.
For a moment, the silence carries more than sound.
It carries memory. Belonging.
It carries every step that came before yours.
And you, just for a few steps, become someone who remembers what it means to move through the world with presence, reverence, and humility.
“Out here, you learn that walking is a form of listening, not just to the land, but to yourself. Everyone leaves with something they didn’t arrive with.” – A returning guest
Explore Pafuri. Walk with us, not to conquer the bush, but to return to something older.
To walk with presence.
To walk with purpose.
To walk where ancestors walked.
Start your journey
Or email us at reservations@returnafrica.com
