Jessica Ismail

I always struggle with writing a bio because I truly am just an ordinary girl who grew up in a Texas town with a lot of random passions and dreams but no clearcut path of how it was all going to come together for me as an adult.

Growing up, I was lucky enough to have parents that knew the value of connecting with nature. My dad is an extraordinary landscape & wildlife photographer and true lover of the outdoors. Each summer our family would load up in our van and head west to camp for weeks on end in the National Parks of Colorado, Utah & Wyoming. It was on these travels that I developed my love for the outdoors, adventure and photography.

These loves turned into my life’s passion during my first trip to South Africa with my husband, Faizel, who is also a wildlife photographer and from South Africa. From the moment we landed in South Africa, I immediately felt home. I was captivated by the wildlife, but also the people, culture, landscape and food. That’s the magic of Africa.

It was this experience that inspired Faizel & I to start our photographic safari company, Enzuri Safaris. It started with the simple dream of giving people the opportunity to reconnect with our planet’s incredible wild spaces and cultures, so that they could experience something beautiful and find the very thing that makes them feel alive. As this dream evolved, so did we, and today Enzuri is a specialist boutique safari and travel company, with over 15 years of experience in safaris, adventure travel, international travel, hospitality and wildlife photography.

My adventures have lead me to some incredible places and life defining moments, like photographing the Great Migration in the Serengeti, diving with great white sharks in South Africa, tracking wolves in Yellowstone, witnessing lions hunt on the grasslands of Kenya and dune bashing in the deserts of Dubai.

So that’s my story. A girl from a Texas town, now traveling the world, photographing wildlife and leading others on adventures of a lifetime.