Africa, the Polar Regions, the Indian Ocean and beyond.
Pretty WILD creates private journeys into the world's most extraordinary wild places — thoughtfully designed to inspire connection, perspective and transformation. Not itineraries. Not packages. Journeys shaped around you, drawn from twenty years of living and guiding in these places.
Because you cannot care for what you do not know. And once you know the wild — truly know it — something in you returns.
Not a holiday.
A return.
Southern and East Africa, privately guided. The Africa Nicky has called home for two decades — its light, its silences, its slow unfolding.
Explore this journeyAntarctica, South Georgia, Svalbard, Greenland. Ice, light and a silence so complete it rearranges you.
Explore this journeyIslands, ocean, culture and movement. Barefoot days measured in tides rather than hours.
Explore this journeyLearning to see differently, guided by Nicky — specialist photographic expedition leader across Africa and the polar regions.
Explore this journeySilence, horses, ocean, wide-open sky. A slower kind of journey, for those quietly ready to feel like themselves again.
Explore this journeyNicky Souness has spent more than two decades guiding in the world's wildest places — from Singita and Tswalu Kalahari to Antarctica, Greenland, Svalbard and South Georgia. She is not a travel agent. She is a guide, a curator, and a matchmaker between people and the places that will change them.
Every Pretty WILD journey is drawn from places she has lived, walked and returned to — and shaped around the person you are when you arrive, and the one you'd like to be when you come home.
"Each time one of us touches the soil, we feel a sense of personal renewal." Malcolm — Tswalu, 2014
"Anyone that gets to safari with you is a real honor. You are so passionate about what you do and the world needs more people like you." Emma
"You are not a quick guide. You are a friend forever." Bernd & Brigit
"Your enthusiasm for the bush is infectious and your knowledge and manner made a significantly fantastic difference." Nina
"We were blown away by the safari you organised for us. I believe our family will forever share the same highlight of our lives. What an experience!" Graham
Not a form. A real conversation about where you are, and what you're quietly looking for.
Designed around you — the places, the pace, the people. Nothing off the shelf.
Shifted. Grounded. The people around you will notice before you do.
Rewilding, for those who have achieved much — and are quietly ready for more. Every journey is designed and quoted individually.
Start with a conversationTell us where you are. We'll help you find your way back — through the wildest places on earth.
hello@prettywild.co.zaSouthern and East Africa, privately guided. Slow, deep, and entirely yours.
This is the Africa Nicky has lived in for twenty years — as a Singita guide, as head guide of Tswalu Kalahari, and as a walker of its quiet places long before and after. A Pretty WILD safari is not a circuit of lodges. It is a private unfolding: the right landscapes, the right people, the right pace, chosen for you alone.
Days find their own rhythm. You may cover great distances or barely move at all. What matters is what happens to you while you're there — the noticing, the slowing, the return of wonder.
Late afternoon in the Sabi Sand. The vehicle switched off. Nothing but breathing, and her tail swaying below the branch.
Following elephant paths through the green season, reading tracks the way you'd read a letter from an old friend.
A sky with no edges. The stars come all the way down to the dunes, and the silence has a texture you can feel.
Uganda's high forest. Sitting quietly with a mountain gorilla family — one of the most humbling hours on earth.
Somewhere with no signal and nowhere to be. This, it turns out, is the moment guests remember most.
Every safari is designed from scratch, around you. Tell us what you're drawn to — or let us surprise you.
Antarctica, South Georgia, Svalbard, Greenland. Ice, light, and a silence that rearranges you.
Nicky has led expeditions at both ends of the earth — Antarctica, South Georgia, Svalbard and Greenland — as a specialist polar guide. She knows these places not as destinations but as weather, light and living ice.
We travel both ways into the white: classic small-ship voyages along the Antarctic Peninsula, and deep interior expeditions — flying beyond the coast to stand, quietly, at an emperor penguin colony. Two very different journeys. The same profound stillness.
On its terms, from the ice edge in Svalbard. It appears out of the mist, unhurried, utterly at home — and everything else falls away.
Drifting quietly as they surface around you — tusks, whiskers, curiosity. Ancient, comic, and unforgettable company.
By small ship: whales at the bow, penguin highways on the slopes, evenings when the ice turns rose and gold.
Flying beyond the coast into the continent's white heart to stand at an emperor penguin colony. Very few people on earth will ever do this.
A single beach holding a hundred thousand king penguins. There is no preparing for it.
Ship or sky, ice edge or emperor colony — the right polar journey depends entirely on you. Let's find it together.
Islands, ocean, culture and movement. Days measured in tides rather than hours.
The Indian Ocean is where the wild goes barefoot. From the outer atolls of the Seychelles to the forests of Madagascar, these journeys trade schedules for tides — sailing, swimming, walking, and simply being somewhere the world hasn't touched.
Some of these places, like Aldabra, are among the most protected and least visited wildernesses on earth. Getting there quietly, and treading lightly, is the whole point.
Fly rod in hand, knee-deep on an outer-atoll flat — bonefish tailing in the shallows, giant trevally patrolling the edge. Saltwater silence.
Following calls through the canopy at dawn — sifakas leaping between trunks, indri song echoing across the forest. Nowhere else on earth.
Walking among giant tortoises on an atoll that belongs entirely to them, then drifting the channels as the tide pours through.
Sleeping on deck, swimming before breakfast, arriving nowhere in particular — beautifully.
Turtles over untouched coral, manta shadows, the quiet click and fizz of a living reef.
Fishing, forests, sailing, stillness — or all of it. Every ocean journey is shaped around you.
Learning to see differently — guided by Nicky, specialist photographic expedition leader.
Nicky has led photographic expeditions across Africa and the polar regions for years — and every image on this website is hers. These journeys are for anyone with a camera and curiosity, from first zoom to full kit. The photography is the doorway; the real subject is attention.
You'll learn to read light the way a guide reads tracks: to anticipate, to wait, to notice. You come home with photographs — and with a new way of seeing that stays long after.
Waiting at the ice edge until the frame finds you — a polar bear crossing pale sea ice, almost dissolving into the light.
Working from a zodiac at the surface, eye-level with tusks and whiskers, learning patience one frame at a time.
Dust, backlight, long shadows — the desert teaching you everything about warmth and restraint.
One bird on one piece of ice. Discovering that the strongest photographs are usually the quietest.
Going through the day's frames together over a drink — what worked, what almost did, and what tomorrow might bring.
Ice or dust, feathers or fur — tell us what draws your eye, and we'll build the journey around it.
Silence, horses, ocean, stillness. A slower kind of journey — a return to yourself.
Some journeys aren't about how far you go. These are for the quietly exhausted — people who have achieved much, travelled widely, and still come home feeling like they never truly arrived anywhere.
Reconnection journeys move gently: wild coastlines, wide silence, big skies, and time with horses — animals that reflect us back to ourselves with complete honesty. Nothing to perform. Nothing to achieve. Just space, and what rises in it.
An equine ceremony in wide open country. No riding required — just presence, and an animal that reads you better than most people do.
Sound therapy under a night sky with no artificial light for a hundred kilometres. The kind of quiet you can feel in your chest.
Cold water, warm sun, bare feet, nothing scheduled. The sea doing what the sea has always done for us.
Desert, beach or mountain veld at dawn, one slow footstep at a time — sitting still long enough for the wild to come to you.
Shifted. Grounded. The people around you will notice something has changed before you do.
These journeys begin gently — with a conversation about where you are, and what you need.