Maps and access
Sabi Sand map
Where the three public gates are, which camps sit behind each, and how the reserve lies along the Sand River against Kruger's western boundary.
Short answer
Sabi Sand has three public gates and which one you use is decided by your lodge, not by you. Gowrie serves the eight camps in the north, Newington the twelve in the west and centre, Shaws the four in the south. The association publishes coordinates for all three, and they are below, because the last stretch is where satellite navigation stops being reliable. There is no map of the reserve that shows which lodge may drive where, and that is the thing you would most want to see.
Download the official park map
The Sabi Sand Wildtuin publishes colour-coded route maps per gate on its access page, which is the only official mapping we could find. No map anywhere shows the traversing areas, so there is no published picture of which lodge's vehicles may drive on which ground.
Key coordinates
Save these before you go. Mobile coverage inside the park is patchy at best, and a set of waypoints in an offline app will get you out of trouble faster than anything else.
| Place | What it is | Coordinates |
|---|---|---|
| Gowrie Gate | Northern sector, eight camps behind it | -24.694681, 31.515164 |
| Newington Gate | West and central sector, twelve camps behind it | -24.868989, 31.404586 |
| Shaws Gate | Southern sector, four camps behind it | -24.928349, 31.479635 |
Your gate is chosen for you
You do not pick a gate in Sabi Sand. Your lodge sits behind one of the three and that is the one you use, because the permit you show at the boom is stamped by that lodge. Arriving at the wrong gate means a long drive around the outside of the reserve on public roads.
Gowrie in the north serves Arathusa, Cheetah Plains, Chitwa Chitwa, Elephant Plains, Jaci's Sabi House, Nkorho, Silvan and Simbambili. Newington in the west and centre serves the three Dulini camps, Idube, Inyati, Leopard Hills, the five Londolozi camps, Savanna, the three Singita lodges and Ulusaba. Shaws in the south serves Kirkman's Kamp, Tengile and the Lion Sands camps.
What the map cannot show you
The reserve is about 65,000 hectares with no internal fences, so the animals move freely across all of it. Your vehicle does not. Each lodge drives only the ground its traversing agreements allow, and that ranges from 1,860 hectares to more than 18,000 among the operators who publish a figure.
No published map draws those boundaries. Neither the association nor either of the two commercial sites that own the obvious domains has ever put one online. Until somebody does, the hectare figure per lodge is the closest thing to a map of what you will actually see.