African Safari – $25-30K budget (2026)

Hi everyone – my fiancee's dream honeymoon is an African Safari trip. At first, I told her that this wouldn't be possible if we wanted to honeymoon the same year as our wedding, which is next year, and that we would need to wait until 2027 if she really wanted to stick with that vision. I really didn't know anything about Africa or safaris, but have had three couple friends do African safaris either as honeymoon trips or with family for retirement celebrations, and each of them told me that their trips had cost closer to $30K per person.

I recently did some light poking around and now see that there is actually quite a wide range of costs depending on what you do. With that said, having no experience with a trip like this, it's been difficult for me to figure out what would work well for our budget.

Has anyone here done or planned a week-long honeymoon (travel excluded) in Africa and been able to keep the budget to ~$30K? Where would you recommend / recommend that we start researching?

Thank you!