South Africa travel guide

Travel to South Africa between Apr – Sep. Those are the months the weather, the crowds and the airfare line up — outside them you trade one of the three.

Currency

South African Rand (ZAR)

Language

Eleven official languages; English is spoken everywhere a visitor goes.

Time zone

SAST (UTC+2) — 3½ hours behind India

Plug type

Type M (large three-pin) and Type C, 230V — carry a Type M adaptor

Flight time from India

13 hrs

Flying from

Mumbai · Delhi · Ahmedabad

• A Kruger game drive at dawn

  The gates open at sunrise and the first two hours are the whole show — lions walking the tar roads before the day heats up, elephants crossing in front of the vehicle, and if your tracker is good, a leopard draped over a branch. The dry winter months concentrate everything at the waterholes. Take the open safari vehicle over a closed car; you hear the bush, and the guides talk to each other on the radio.

• Table Mountain, by cable car or on foot

  The rotating cable car takes five minutes to the flat top, a thousand metres above the city, and the view — both oceans, Robben Island, the spine of the peninsula running south — earns its reputation. Fit walkers can go up Platteklip Gorge in about two and a half hours. Go the first clear morning of your stay, not the last day: the mountain closes for wind with no notice, and the famous "tablecloth" cloud can sit for days.

• The Cape Peninsula loop

  One perfect day: out along the cliff-cut Chapman’s Peak Drive, down to the lighthouse and wind-bent fynbos at Cape Point, then back via Boulders Beach, where a colony of African penguins waddles between granite boulders a metre from the walkway. Finish at Kirstenbosch botanical garden on the mountain’s eastern slope. The penguins smell exactly as you fear; the children will not care.

• The Winelands — Stellenbosch and Franschhoek

  Forty-five minutes from Cape Town, Cape Dutch farmhouses sit under crags among vines planted since the 1680s. Stellenbosch is the university town with the oak-lined streets; Franschhoek, settled by French Huguenots, is smaller and eats better than anywhere else in the country. The hop-on wine tram makes tasting possible without a driver, and most estates pour generous non-alcoholic grape juice for teetotal visitors.

• Johannesburg’s history, told properly

  Give Johannesburg a day rather than treating it as a transit stop. The Apartheid Museum is one of the great museums anywhere — your entry ticket randomly assigns you a "white" or "non-white" gate, and the point lands before you reach the first exhibit. Vilakazi Street in Soweto is the only street in the world that housed two Nobel Peace laureates, Mandela and Tutu. Gandhi practised law here for two decades; Constitution Hill holds the prison where both he and Mandela were held.

• The Panorama Route

  On the escarpment beside the Kruger, the Blyde River has cut one of the largest green canyons on earth. The Three Rondavels viewpoint, God’s Window and the water-drilled Bourke’s Luck Potholes string together into an easy half-day by road, and the viewpoints sit almost at the car park — no trekking required, which makes this the scenic day for grandparents on a family trip.

• Braai — the South African barbecue

  Not a cooking method but a social institution, done over real wood, never gas. Boerewors sausage and lamb chops are the standards; at a safari lodge the braai becomes a boma dinner under the stars. Vegetarians should ask for braaied mielies — corn on the cob — and the grilled halloumi-style cheese most lodges keep.

• Bunny chow

  Durban’s Indian community hollowed out a half loaf of bread and filled it with curry, and the result became a national dish. Bean and potato versions are everywhere, they are properly spiced by Indian standards, and eating one with your hands is the correct technique. The name has nothing to do with rabbits — it comes from the Gujarati bania traders who first sold it.

• Cape Malay curry and bobotie

  The Bo-Kaap quarter cooks the Cape’s oldest fusion food — curries sweetened with dried fruit, gently spiced, descended from Indonesian and Indian slaves and free traders. Bobotie, the baked spiced mince under an egg custard, is the signature; ask for the lentil version, which most Bo-Kaap kitchens make.

• Rooibos, biltong and koeksisters

  Rooibos tea grows only in the Cederberg north of Cape Town and is naturally caffeine-free — try it with milk, made like chai. Biltong is air-dried spiced meat, the national snack. Koeksisters are plaited dough soaked in syrup and taste startlingly like a crisp gulab jamun.

• For vegetarian and Jain travellersJain friendly

  Easier than you expect. Johannesburg’s Fordsburg and Durban’s Indian quarters cook pure vegetarian at home standards, and Cape Town has Indian restaurants around Long Street and Sea Point that will do Jain with a day’s notice. The gap is the safari: bush lodges cook set menus, so we notify dietary needs at booking and carry theplas for the long drive days. Supermarket labels mark vegetarian items clearly with a green V.

Set a meal preference — vegetarian, Jain or halal — when you book and we brief every hotel and restaurant on your itinerary.

• Rooibos tea and fynbos honey, both light to carry and impossible to find at home
• Beaded Ndebele and Zulu craftwork — buy at township cooperatives, where the maker is paid directly
• Springbok and kudu leather goods from the Cape Town waterfront workshops
• Amarula cream liqueur from duty free, made from the marula fruit elephants famously raid
• Protea-motif linen and ceramics — the king protea is the national flower and the design signature
• The Neighbourgoods and Oranjezicht markets in Cape Town for small-label preserves and chilli sauces

Distances are the thing to respect: Johannesburg to the Kruger is five hours by road, and Johannesburg to Cape Town is a two-hour flight, never a drive. Domestic flights on FlySafair and Airlink are frequent and cheap if booked early. Uber works well in Johannesburg and Cape Town and is the right choice at night — do not hail street taxis. Inside the Kruger a guided open vehicle beats self-driving for a first visit: the guides share sightings by radio, and the park’s 50 km/h limit and gate curfews are strictly enforced. In Cape Town the hop-on bus covers the peninsula sights well.

• The crime warnings are real but manageable with city sense: use Uber after dark, keep phones off café tables, leave jewellery in the hotel safe, and stick to the visitor districts — Sandton and Rosebank in Johannesburg, the City Bowl, Atlantic Seaboard and V&A in Cape Town. Township visits are rewarding with a local guide and unwise without one.
• Never leave anything visible in a parked car, including an empty bag. At traffic lights in Johannesburg keep windows up and bags in the boot, not on seats.
• On safari the rules exist because the animals are genuinely wild: never leave the vehicle except at marked points, never stand up in an open vehicle at a sighting, and keep arms inside. Baboons at Cape Point will snatch food from your hands — do not carry open snacks.
• Malaria prophylaxis is recommended for the Kruger lowveld; consult a travel clinic two weeks before departure. Cape Town, Johannesburg and the Winelands are malaria-free, and so are the private reserves in the Eastern Cape if the safari must skip medication.
• Table Mountain weather turns fast. Carry a warm layer even on a hot day, and if you hike, use the marked routes and start before noon — the mountain rescue statistics are mostly people who did neither.
• Load-shedding — scheduled power cuts — still happens in patches. Good hotels have generators; keep your phone charged and a torch in the day bag anyway.

Per person, per day, on the ground — meals, local transport and entry tickets. Flights and hotels sit in the package price, not here.