It will contain something you did not ask for

Structural signs

• Fewer places than you asked for. Almost every first wish list has one stop too many, and removing it is the commonest good decision in safari planning.
• Three nights in most places. Two-night stays should be rare and deliberate — a city transit, or a deliberate short stop with a specific purpose.
• The land type named for every camp, because it is what decides the day.
• The vehicle arrangement stated explicitly, for each leg of the trip.
• Fees, flights and permits itemised rather than folded into a per-night figure.
• A sentence about why these places, written in terms of you rather than in the language of the camps’ own websites.

Behavioural signs

The person writing it asked you something you had not thought about — how you feel about small aircraft, whether anyone in the party wants to walk, what your first safari was like if you have had one, whether a fourteen-year-old is coming.

They also told you something you did not want to hear. Three countries does not fit ten nights. The camp you found online is lovely and in the wrong place for your dates. The extra $400 a night would do more as a private vehicle than as a bigger tent.

Both of those are cheap to fake and almost never faked, because a template has no mechanism for producing them.

What it is fair to expect

Two or three passes before it is right. A first draft is a proposal, not a verdict, and a planner who treats revisions as an imposition is telling you how the rest of the relationship will go.

Also: a straight answer to every one of the nine questions, and no pressure attached to a deadline that turns out to be soft.

Asking for changes without starting again

You do not need to justify a change and you should not accept a plan out of politeness. These four instructions are all normal, and all of them improve most first drafts:

• "Fewer places, more nights in each." The single most effective revision available.
• "We want to be able to walk" — or drive at night, or go off-road. This is a land requirement and it will reshape the map.
• "We do not want to share a vehicle." Ask what it adds. Frequently less than the upgrade you were considering instead.
• "What would this look like at $X?" A good answer removes a stop rather than shaving every line.

One thing worth remembering

Most itineraries that arrive are decent work by people who know the ground. The purpose of auditing one is rarely to discover a villain; it is to convert a document you cannot judge into a conversation you can have.

A plan that survives the nine questions is a plan you can sign without wondering.