Do remember that although more powerful binoculars look attractive they might be heavier, and the more power you use the more difficult it is to maintain a steady aim/focus on the animal. Same for long camera lenses, of course.
Hello Travel Maven Kat --
We did the K&T tour over Christmas/ New Years this year. With five or six people per jeep, it gets tricky to get the view you want. We wore binoculars AND camera straps around our necks and it was weighty (as Richard's post suggests). We discovered that the zoom on a video camera was as good as regular binoculars (7x50 with a zoom to 70) -- with the additional benefit that one could push the button to record the image if an animal did anything noteworthy. (The animals sit in the shade a lot and blink at tourists. Can you blame them?)
We brought binoculars on both our K&T and our South Africa Safaris. Had we forgotten them, we would not have missed them much. We are returning in July of next year, and we will pack even lighter. Fewer pictures, more viewing, smelling, and enjoying. If I want a visual reminder of what we did, I watch "Out of Africa", or "Hitari", or "Born Free". They each portray the Tauck experience to a certain degree in different ways. And the geography involved is actually quite similar. Watch the credits at the end of these movies and you may recognize the territory.
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We did the K&T tour over Christmas/ New Years this year. With five or six people per jeep, it gets tricky to get the view you want. We wore binoculars AND camera straps around our necks and it was weighty (as Richard's post suggests). We discovered that the zoom on a video camera was as good as regular binoculars (7x50 with a zoom to 70) -- with the additional benefit that one could push the button to record the image if an animal did anything noteworthy. (The animals sit in the shade a lot and blink at tourists. Can you blame them?)