UNCHARTED
worldwide
UNCHARTED
Travel Company
member since MARCH 2026
For the Cunningham family, the safari was never just a trip. It was a kind of education; a lesson in what happens when people pay close attention to the land they're standing on and the communities that call it home.
UNCHARTED grew out of that understanding. Over three decades ago, Chip and Sandy Cunningham began connecting travellers with the kinds of properties most people never find on their own: small, family-run lodges and tented camps in East Africa, where the owners know every guide by name, staff come from the surrounding villages, and conservation isn't a marketing angle but a way of life. From the start, they've vetted every property by experiencing it themselves, because that's the only way to know whether a place truly does what it says.
That ethos has since travelled well beyond East Africa. Today, UNCHARTED works with properties across the globe that carry the same safari sensibility at their core: take care of the land, take care of the animals, and uplift the community that holds it all together.
And they're upfront with their clients about what that means in practice: a smaller lodge, local staff, an experience that sends you home knowing more than when you arrived.
UNCHARTED’s 4C Commitments
CONSERVATION
Works only with camps, lodges, and operators whose business actively protects wildlife and the habitats they depend on. Every booking sends money directly to conservation on the ground.
Champions the people and projects doing the unglamorous work of protecting wild places, and makes sure the travellers who visit know their names, their stories, and why the work matters.
COMMUNITY
Chooses operators and properties where the benefit to local communities is visible and ongoing, not a marketing line in a brochure. If a place doesn't meaningfully support the people who live around it, it doesn't make the list.
Briefs guests on the cultural and social context of where they're going before they arrive, so they turn up ready to meet people properly rather than just photograph them.
CULTURE
Designs experiences that are led by local guides and hosts, not just set in their backyards. The people whose culture it actually is are the ones telling the story, which tends to be the only way the exchange is honest.
Through Global Safari Magazine, UNCHARTED's editorial platform, they share the stories of cultural custodians and conservation leaders who rarely get the spotlight they deserve.
COMMERCE
Favours locally-owned properties and independent guides wherever possible, which keeps the money travellers spend circulating through the communities hosting them.