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Luxury Travel to South Africa- Johannesburg

While Cape Town has beautiful scenery, entertainment and dining options and an idyllic cityscape to offer, Johannesburg is like its more streetwise, sexily dangerous counterpart.

South Africa has always been associated with luxury travel- polished safari lodges, excellent city-centre luxury hotels and haute cuisine from hotel kitchens being de rigeur even in the most remote safari outposts.

Tipped as the New York of Africa, Johannesburg acts as the financial capital of South Africa and attracts gold prospectors( of the literal and metaphorical sort). The (sexily) dangerous character and reputation of the city gives a delicious frisson to this city, serving as a microcosm of this country's turbulent history. Any tour to South Africa would be incomplete without experiencing this city.

Johannesburg, not traditionally recognised as a tourist destination but more of a necessary(and at times, begrudged) point of transit for tourists visiting to the more scenic Cape Town or making their way to Kruger, is essentially for travellers looking to get under the skin of a country.

The interestingly-designed Apartheid Museum( gorgeous sleek minimalist lines and interesting coupling of materials aside, the museum forces the visitor to experience bits of life under apartheid rule first-hand through its segregated entrances, tickets and introduction to persons who lived through apartheid)is a must- see in Johannesburg, as are the art galleries, mushrooming across the country in cognizance of the neglected genre of vernacular art.

Head down to the Market Theatre complex, once a notorious place for staging anti-apartheid plays- now a centre for modern South African playwriting.

Luxury travel in South Africa, aside from facilitating the top names in local luxury accommodation, includes privileged access to personalities, intimate knowledge of the lodges as well as escorted travel, representing the new frontier in luxury travel. Travel according to niche interests is also possible, Urbane Nomads offering an insider's look to the kwaito scene in South Africa, travel to remote safari lodges, rounded off with relaxation in the Cape Winelands.

Photo series- Courtesy of Singita and Bushmans Kloof