Your Soul Journey to the Okavango
2025
Waking up in the Okavango is like falling through a veil into a long forgotten world that is whole, healthy and brimming with life. Hearing the cacophony of birdsong is a shocking reminder of how much animal, bird and insect life we have lost through our taming of nature.
When we stretch towards healing in an environment that supports us because it is so naturally healthy, the work feels effortless and it becomes easy for our soul selves to guide the process.
Meet your Team
Soul Safaris with Robyn & Nicky
Robyn and Nicky are a mother-and-son team, dedicated to making your safari experience feel like a homecoming. Nicky, a professional safari guide, leads you through the wilderness with deep knowledge and respect for the land, while Robyn, your soul journey guide, helps you connect to the spirit of the wild through the way of stillness and deep listening.
You can travel with both of us for a fully immersive experience, or either of us can accompany you independently—whichever suits your journey best.
Robyn can travel with you as your personal soul journey guide on a safari you arrange.
Nicky can guide you through the bush as a shamanic safari guide, blending expert wildlife knowledge with a deep spiritual connection to nature.
(We’re also happy to connect you with the best lodges and camps to match your preferences)
Let us guide you into the heart of the wild—where adventure meets soul.
I have been blessed to spend most of my life in Botswana, a land of breathtaking landscapes and unspoilt wilderness. I love being surrounded by the rhythm of nature, the vastness of the Kalahari, and the life-giving waters of the Okavango Delta. I’ve deep reverence for this incredible place. It’s a land where time seems to slow, where the air feels alive with possibility, and where the soul can truly breathe.
I am passionate about sharing this experience with others, inviting friends and fellow travelers to join me on a journey into the untouched beauty and natural healthiness of this magical land. The Okavango Delta, in particular, holds a special place in my soul—a pristine paradise teeming with wildlife and offering moments of profound peace and connection. Whether it’s gliding silently through crystal-clear waters on a mokoro, watching the sun dip below the horizon in a blaze of color, or simply soaking in the quiet wisdom of the wilderness, each visit is a renewal of spirit.
Soul Safaris are my way of sharing the transformative power of this extraordinary place. It’s an invitation to step away from the noise of daily life and reconnect with the earth, with yourself, and with the deeper currents of life that flow through us all. Together, we explore not only the outer landscape but also the inner one, finding inspiration, healing, and joy in the wild beauty of Botswana.
ROBYN
Your Soul Safari
We create bespoke soul safaris based on your vision of how you want to spend your time in the African Wild. All you need to do is pitch up, relax, let go of the busyness of stressful lives back home and simply allow the soulfulness to emerge by itself.
Journeying into Stillness
Or alternatively, you arrange your safari, and invite either one or both of us to accompany you to enhance your experience of the wild — where we offer meditation, soulful connection, and quieting the mind.
What we Offer
The Art of Wild Connection
Your safari, reimagined as a soulful journey:
• Meditation under ancient skies
• Soul integration in sacred spaces
• Dance inspired by the rhythm of the wild
• Deep listening: to the land, to yourself
• Animal communication: honoring the wisdom of the wild
• Immersion in nature: finding the sacred in all things
• Centering into stillness: releasing stress, awakening clarity
Step beyond witnessing nature—enter into conversation with it.
Vision and Philosophy
Where Spirit Meets Wilderness
The Okavango is more than a place—it’s a living being, pulsing with untamed wisdom. Our vision is to invite you into its sacred embrace, where the wild becomes a mirror for your soul.
Through practices of stillness, presence, and joy, we create space for transformation: from being a visitor to becoming part of the earth’s song.
This is not about adding to your itinerary—it’s about deepening your journey.
How You’ll Benefit
A Journey Beyond the Itinerary
• Rediscover your wholeness through the timeless wisdom of nature.
• Release stress as the wild holds space for your quieting.
• Awaken your senses to the subtle language of the earth.
• Discover sacred space in every step, every sound, every silence.
• Feel a deep belonging, not just to the land but to yourself.
When you return home, you won’t just carry memories—you’ll carry the wild within you.
“It feels like this rogue element in each of us stems from separation anxiety. Separation from Nature, each other, ourselves, time. It is from this space of deep collective anxiety, which grows with every technological advancement, that we behave in ways that are solely focused on our survival, and not our existence/ experience. We live on deadlines, and fear flat-lines. The beauty of this Pilgrimage into Botswana starts with the journey into its heart. Along bumpy, dusty roads that take hours of our “precious” time. We live in a world of immediate gratification. Of instant coffee, and emails. We have mindfulness apps and online gurus to quickly help us through the busyness. We have become separated from time, because we rush through life thinking we don’t have enough.”
Nardia Sheldon (Nicky’s wife)
How would you like your own bespoke soul safari to look?
We are about to embark on a journey of self discovery with meditations, guided processes &
exploration of your inner life while immersed in the African wilderness.
A Soul Safari is an exploration of the wild places within us that are simultaneously reflected in the environment around us.
As C.G. Jung said,
“Nothing happens in which you are not entangled in a secret manner, for everything has ordered itself around you and plays your innermost. Nothing in you is hidden to things The stars whisper your deepest mysteries to you, and the soft valleys of the earth rescue you in a motherly womb.”
It is the wildness of the Okavango delta that offers us the deepest opportunity for healing. Waking up in the delta is like falling through a veil into a long-forgotten world that is whole, healthy and brimming with life. Hearing the cacophony of birdsong is a shocking reminder of how much animal, bird and insect life we have lost through our taming of nature.
It is a reminder of how much of ourselves we have lost through our disconnection from nature.
Each participant begins their exploration by setting their intentions before commencing the physical journey.
Leet’s begin with our intentions for your trip:
Robyn:
When we stretch towards healing in an environment that supports us because it is so naturally healthy, becoming centered feels effortless and it becomes easy for our soul selves to guide the process. This in turn assists with expressing our most open hearted and creative selves in our daily lives back home.
Nicholas:
What is the medicine of the bush? How do we engage with nature to heal the parts of us that are broken through our disconnection and our addictions to the ‘unreal’ stuff of everyday life? How do we reconnect to the realness of being a mammal? How do we recognise that we are nothing more than a ghost in a bag of blood experiencing the Divine?
"Let the beauty of what we Love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground" ~ Rumi
To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.” ~Mark Nepo
The steady rhythm of the earth is so present in Botswana that it brings us back into alignment with our true direction. It is a place where we can walk in nature, meditate, rejuvenate and rest. In the evenings when we gaze up at the brilliant desert stars from the campfire it is easy to re-imagine the way we want to live in this world. This wilderness heals something deep inside of us so that our hearts expand widely enough to hold even the wounded soul of humanity.
The goal of a soul safari is to find the place where inner and outer landscapes merge, where our souls meet ourselves, where our hearts awaken, where our creativity stirs our imaginations, where the smallest wildflower holds the magnificence of sacred experience, where our challenges become promises, where silence leads us home, and where we are touched by our own unique longing so that it transfigures into a love of life
Some examples of how you might choose to structure your day
You get to create your own itinerary (and there is always time to simply spend on your own breathing in the stillness)
My soul shines through at the places where the sacred and profane merge.
- Early morning game drives. Slowing down, noticing the little things, meditation in the bush, exploring the symbolic meaning of the wildlife that come to meet and engage with us. (The external world as a reflection of our internal energy)
- Early morning game walks. Walking meditation ‘on having no head’. Engaging in nature in a way that releases the separation created by the thinking mind. Walking like a wild animal that does not differentiate between form, movement, or the stillness within
- Guided meditations for coming into harmony with nature
- Process and group exploration. Guided Group practice for connecting to your soul self. Reflections on what is arising as we sink into places of stillness.
- Sensory awakening. Beginning to slow down and come into alignment with the ancient rhythm and wisdom of the trees and the Earth.
- Circle sharing. Deep Listening as a powerful skill for centering
- Eating as meditation
- Dance and movement for somatic healing and for sheer enjoyment
- Siesta times: Guided relaxation for those who would like to participate, OR individual check-ins with Robyn about soul work if you choose to do so
- Deep Listening as a powerful skill for centering.
- Shamanic art for honouring the land and our connection to its wisdom and symbolic significance.
- Journaling your experience as a meditation
- Mokoro trips into the delta. Further deepening the stillness and the relaxation while enjoying being poled out on the waterways in dugout canoes.
- Late afternoon game drives. Stillness and silence game drive to practice deep listening skills
- Natural bush food preparation. Cooking supper on the coals (without braai grids). Wild game meat and other interesting local delicacies such as Marama nuts, koetchoes (truffles), mopani worms and palatshe are available to those who are interested in them, in season.
- Evenings around the fire: The value of myths and stories while breathing in the cadence of the stars, the bush sounds and the crackling fire
- Drum journeys for connecting to our animal guides
- Fire meditations with ancestral silence and connection to the stars – a few hours of aloneness to explore the deep pulse of natural time.
- Closing Ceremonies
If only we knew, boss, what the stones and rain and flowers say, maybe they call – call us – and we don’t hear them. When will people’s ears open, boss? When shall our eyes open to see? When shall we open our arms to embrace everything – stones, rain, flowers, men? What d’you think about that, boss? And what do your books have to say about it?”
Zorba The Greek by Nikos Kazantzaki
About us
Nicholas Sheldon
Nicholas is a professional safari guide, soul explorer and conservationist. Having grown up in the wilds of Botswana, he developed a true love for bush and safari life.
After spending a decade traveling the world exploring different cultures and their relationship to their unique natural environments, he has been back in Botswana for the last 12 years bringing this love for the sacred dance between man and nature into all aspects of his daily life.
Nicholas has worked closely with shamans in the Peruvian jungle, sangomas in Southern Africa and indigenous tribes on islands off North Western Australia. He uses breathwork to access the deeper levels of consciousness where the natural world and the sense of self merge into a creative matrix of pure being.
Robyn Sheldon
During our Soul Safaris, we invite our clients on a transformative journey of self- discovery to explore the depths of their own existence.
Robyn’s sanctuary lies amidst the breathtaking landscapes of the Okavango delta in Botswana, where she draws inspiration from the wildlife and the power and mystery of the natural world. Because she appreciates the power of the natural world to bring us back into alignment with our inner knowing, she bases her healing work in the Okavango because it is one of the most pristine areas of wilderness in the world.
She has been practicing a transformative healing modality called Soul Integration for thirty years, and has spent a similar amount of time developing her meditation practice. She infuses creativity and a deep commitment to the sacred nature of life into her healing methodologies.
Robyn has a profound commitment to global healing and transformation. She is committed to developing awareness around multi-dimensional ways of living in this world.
Beyond her professional endeavors, she is on a lifelong search to explore the sacred mysteries of life.
To learn more about Robyn’s work and philosophy, visit her website at www.okavangohealing.com.
For direct inquiries, reach out to Robyn at robyn@robynsheldon.com
You are as soft and powerful as water
“To see the preciousness of all things, we must bring our full attention to life.”
Jack Kornfield
