Having already won the 2023 PURE Award for Creativity for their Onduli Ridge luxury camp, Ultimate Safaris will on 1 May, be opening the brand new Onduli Spa, serving guests of both Onduli Ridge, and the Onduli Enclave private villa.

The PURE Awards have been hosted since 2014, honouring those who tirelessly push boundaries, champion creativity, and use travel to empower communities and protect the planet. The campaign to find the leaders in experiential travel culminates each year at the PURE Life Experiences travel show in Marrakech, Morocco, where tourism leaders and innovators from around the world gather to make connections, learn from each other, and find new ways of doing business that benefits not only travellers, but local communities too. While 2023’s event had to be cancelled to instead repair the country and care for those injured and affected by the deadly 9 September earthquake, this in no way detracted from the pride felt by all at Ultimate Safaris at having won the Creativity Award after having been short-listed for the Mindful Design, Transformative Travel, and Conservation & Sustainability Awards.

Ultimate Safaris’ co-founder and Managing Director, Tristan Cowley summed it up, saying: “We are really humbled to have won an award that not only considers projects and efforts from around the world, but is also reviewed and adjudicated by industry experts and colleagues. Being ranked with the very best in the world is not only a massive achievement for Ultimate Safaris, but for Namibia as a destination itself, and credit must go to our incredible tribe for all the hard work they put into enthralling our guests.” 

Onduli Ridge, which is named for the resident giraffe, was chosen from a list that included Ecuador’s Kontiki Neo-Luxury Sea Expeditions and the Office of The Night’s campaign to uncover the queer history of Italy’s Renaissance Florence, for its innovative design, sustainability, and conservation. The camp, which is situated in Namibia’s Damaraland, not only blends into the surrounding granite outcrops seamlessly, but is also 100% solar powered, recycles all its water, operates a highly developed solid-waste system, and pays substantial royalties to the local community and conservation.

The soon to be launched Spa will offer guests of Onduli Ridge, as well as the nearby, privately serviced stand-alone villa known as Onduli Enclave, ethically sourced, African made, and cruelty-free products which, tying into the minimal impact philosophy of Ultimate Safaris, are 100% biodegradable. The full range of available treatments are provided in state-of-the-art facilities offering panoramic views of the breathtaking Damaraland landscape, with Namibia’s tallest mountain, the Brandberg, to the south and the granite inselbergs to the north.