SAWS has issued heatwave warnings for several regions this spring, and forecasters expect a hotter, drier end to 2026. Summer remains one of the best times to explore the country, from the beaches of KwaZulu-Natal to the bushveld and the Drakensberg, but it is also the season of heatwaves, high UV levels and elevated fire danger. Profound Travel and Tours supports the call and shares the official guidance below. #ResponsibleTraveller #WeDoTourism

What Authorities Advise Visitors

• Check the forecast daily. Visitors are advised to follow SAWS warnings on weathersa.co.za or the SAWS app before setting out, and to adjust plans when a heatwave or fire-danger warning is in place.
• Plan around the hottest hours. Hikes, game drives and city walks are best scheduled for early morning or late afternoon, with rest indoors or in the shade between roughly 11:00 and 15:00.
• Drink water before feeling thirsty. Travellers should carry a refillable bottle, sip regularly and limit alcohol and very sugary drinks, which speed up dehydration.
• Protect against the sun. Broad-spectrum sunscreen (SPF 30 or higher), reapplied every two hours, together with a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses and light, loose clothing, is recommended.
• Swim safely. On the coast, swim only at beaches where lifeguards are on duty and between the flags.
• Never leave anyone in a parked vehicle. Temperatures inside a closed car rise to dangerous levels within minutes, even with the windows slightly open. This applies to children, older travellers and pets.
• Look out for one another. Young children, older adults and people with chronic illnesses are most at risk, so travel companions should check in on each other often.

Know the warning signs

Heat exhaustion may cause heavy sweating, dizziness, headache, nausea and muscle cramps. The person should move to a cool place, loosen clothing and sip water. Heatstroke is a medical emergency: signs include confusion, slurred speech, hot skin, fainting or seizures. Call for help immediately on 10177 (ambulance) or 112 from any mobile phone, and cool the person with water and shade while waiting.

What Authorities Advise Tourism Businesses

• Adapt itineraries. Move strenuous activities to cooler parts of the day and build in shaded rest stops.
• Keep water within reach. Provide drinking water on vehicles, at reception and at activity points.
• Brief guests. Share heat safety tips at check-in and before departures, including what to do if someone feels unwell.
• Look after staff. Guides, drivers, porters and outdoor staff work in the heat for long hours. Rotate duties, schedule regular breaks in the shade and train staff to recognise heat illness.
• Check vehicles and cooling. Service air-conditioning in tour vehicles and guest rooms ahead of peak season.
• Respect fire danger warnings. Avoid open fires and braais when warnings are in place, and make sure guests know the rules.
• Use water wisely. Heatwaves strain local supplies. Encourage guests to save water so surrounding communities are not left short.

Stay Informed: Weather Pages to Follow

Travellers are also advised to follow trusted weather pages on social media for timely updates while on the road:

• South African Weather Service (SAWS): the official source of forecasts, heatwave and fire-danger warnings, at weathersa.co.za and on its verified social media accounts.
• The Weather Hooligan: a popular South African weather page with regular forecasts and severe-weather updates, on Facebook.
• Storm chaser and severe-weather communities: groups such as the Severe Weather and Information Centre SA (SWAICSA) share real-time reports, photos and storm sightings from across the country.

Community pages are a useful early alert, but official SAWS warnings should always guide travel decisions.

Responsible Travel Is Shared Travel

Being a responsible traveller means caring for more than one’s own trip. It means protecting the people who make tourism possible and the communities and environments being visited. By planning ahead, staying informed and looking out for one another, everyone can keep enjoying South Africa safely, whatever the temperature.

Planning a summer getaway? The Profound Travel and Tours team can help you choose the right times, routes and activities for a comfortable trip. Ask a Question at info@profoundtravel.co.za or call 081 725 2388.

Hero image: Durban Tourism (visitdurban.travel).

The post Travelling Through the Heat: Staying Safe During South Africa’s Heatwaves first appeared on Profound Travels.

Photo: Pustam.EGR / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0) — the Langtang Khola near Syapru Besi, Rasuwa district, close to where the flood struck.

What Happened In Nepal

Scientists from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development believe a large volume of ice and rock broke away from a glacier and plunged into the Lende Khola, a tributary of the Bhote Koshi River, generating a sudden surge of water, sediment and boulders that raced downstream. The Trishuli River at Galchhi rose nine metres in thirty minutes. At Malekhu, it rose seven metres in a similar span. Villages, roads, bridges and an estimated 430 megawatts of hydropower and solar generating capacity were damaged or destroyed in Rasuwa and neighbouring Nuwakot district, roughly 100km north of Kathmandu near the border with Tibet.

At least eight people were confirmed dead in the first hours, a toll that continued to climb as search efforts widened. More than 380 people were reported missing, among them hundreds of foreign nationals: Indian, American, British, Malaysian, South Korean, Dutch, Australian and, notably for our own readers, South African travellers. Many were pilgrims making their way toward Mount Kailash in Tibet, a route that passes directly through the affected valleys. Nepal’s Prime Minister, Balen Shah, convened emergency response meetings and deployed army helicopters and rescue teams, while India and China both sent assistance across the border. Officials urged everyone living near the rivers in Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading to move to higher ground immediately, warning that debris blocking the river could give way and send a second surge downstream.

Advice For South Africans Travelling Abroad

A disaster like this is a sharp reminder that a holiday itinerary should never be built on hope alone. Before booking travel to any mountainous, river-valley or monsoon-prone destination, check your destination’s official advisories as well as South Africa’s own DIRCO travel guidance, and keep checking them after you’ve paid, not just before. Conditions in remote regions can change in the time it takes to board a connecting flight.

Buy comprehensive travel insurance and actually read the fine print on natural disaster cover, medical evacuation and repatriation. Cheap policies often exclude exactly the kind of event that leaves you needing them most. Share your full itinerary and emergency contacts with someone at home before you leave, and register with the nearest South African embassy or consulate if you’re heading somewhere remote.

Take local warnings about riverbanks, gorges and low-lying ground seriously, even if the weather looks calm where you’re standing. Know where higher ground is before you need it. Keep digital copies of your passport and key documents backed up online in case the originals are lost, carry a portable charger, and download offline maps for areas where signal is unreliable, because communication networks are often among the first things a flood takes out.

Perhaps the simplest piece of advice is also the most overlooked: travel with a reputable, licensed operator who knows the terrain, carries proper safety protocols and has an emergency plan, rather than improvising logistics alone in unfamiliar, remote country. If disaster does strike nearby, follow local authority instructions, don’t attempt to self-rescue, and let your insurer and operator handle the evacuation logistics they’re equipped for.

How One Disaster Ripples Through An Entire Destination’s Tourism

A flood like this devastates the valley it hits directly, but its economic reach is far wider than the water ever travels. International headlines rarely distinguish between “a river valley in Rasuwa” and “Nepal” as a whole, and travellers booking a Kathmandu city break or an Annapurna trek hundreds of kilometres away often cancel anyway, out of caution rather than any real risk to their route.

Nepal has lived through this before. After the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, international arrivals fell sharply for well over a year, even though most of the country’s trekking routes, including large parts of the Everest and Annapurna regions, were structurally unaffected and reopened within weeks. The guides, porters, teahouse owners and small operators along those unaffected trails, who had no damage to repair, still lost a season’s income simply because the world’s image of “Nepal” had changed overnight.

It’s a dynamic South Africans should recognise. KwaZulu-Natal has had its own tourism dented by headlines about crime or unrest in parts of the country hundreds of kilometres from the Drakensberg or the Dolphin Coast. Accurate, specific, timely information, about what happened, where, and what is genuinely still closed, is what allows a destination’s tourism economy to recover in months rather than years. Painting an entire country or province with one incident’s brush punishes the businesses and communities who had nothing to do with it.

Image: European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery — the April 2022 floods around Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, seen from orbit.

KwaZulu-Natal’s Own Floods, And A Bill That’s Still Being Argued Over

Watching Nepal’s rivers rise is difficult to do from KwaZulu-Natal without thinking of April 2022, and the flooding that has returned in the years since, most recently with a national disaster declared in January 2026. The April 2022 floods alone caused an estimated R7 billion in damage, affecting 826 companies and around 31,220 jobs, more than two-thirds of them in eThekwini. Roads, bridges, the Durban port and King Shaka International Airport were all disrupted. Guesthouses, tour operators and small businesses along the coast and inland lost stock, vehicles and, for weeks at a time, the ability to reach their own guests.

Government support did follow: cost-sharing grants through the dtic for rebuilding infrastructure and replacing machinery and vehicles, a multi-hundred-million-rand fund for roads and bridges, working capital grants and interest-free loans for stock replacement, and emergency funding for shelter, water and sanitation. That support has genuinely helped businesses get back on their feet, and it shouldn’t be understated.

But look closely at what almost every one of those schemes actually funds, and a pattern emerges: infrastructure, machinery, stock and buildings. Assets that broke. What is far harder to find is a straightforward scheme that compensates a small tour operator, guesthouse or travel business for the income it simply never earned while the roads were closed, the airport was disrupted and travellers stayed away, weeks or months of trade that vanished without a single window being broken. For a large, insured manufacturer, that gap can be fought in court; Toyota and several packaging companies have pursued multi-billion-rand lawsuits against the municipality and province to recover exactly this kind of loss. For a small tourism business with no legal budget and often no business interruption cover, there is no equivalent route. The infrastructure gets rebuilt. The lost season doesn’t get replaced by anyone.

Researchers tracking how extreme weather is disrupting South African tourism have flagged the same shortfall: a need for genuinely accessible disaster insurance and support that recognises lost trade, not only damaged assets, still doesn’t really exist for the small and mid-sized operators who make up most of KwaZulu-Natal’s tourism economy. This isn’t a complaint against the relief that has been provided. It’s a call to close the gap in it, because after 2022 and now January 2026, it is clear there will be a next flood, and the businesses that survive one season of lost income without help are the ones best placed to still be standing, and hiring, when the next storm passes.

Why This Matters, Wherever You’re Standing

Whether the water is rising in a Himalayan valley or along the Msunduzi and Umgeni rivers, the lesson is the same: preparation, honest and specific information, and support systems that cover the whole cost of a disaster, not just the bricks and machinery, are what determine how quickly people and businesses recover. Our thoughts are with everyone affected in Nepal, and with the many KwaZulu-Natal businesses still rebuilding from floods of their own. Booking your next trip, whether it’s a Drakensberg escape or further afield, through a licensed operator who takes safety planning seriously is one small way to travel a little wiser.

For more travel tips, safety updates and a look behind the scenes of our own KwaZulu-Natal tours, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @GoProfoundly.

Read More

• Al Jazeera: At least eight killed in Nepal flash floods that swept away villages, roads
• NPR: 8 dead, hundreds missing as Nepal avalanche triggers flash floods
• ICIMOD: Major flash flood sweeps through Nepal’s Rasuwa district
• ReliefWeb: Damage to KZN companies estimated at R7 billion
• Freight News: KZN and EC flood-damaged businesses thrown financial lifeline
• Global Government Forum: Should governments pay businesses for climate disasters?

The post Nepal’s Floods, KwaZulu-Natal’s Scars: A Wake-Up Call For Travellers And Tourism first appeared on Profound Travels.