19-Day East Africa Grand Safari

A private transfer meets the flight into Nairobi and continues to a lodge overlooking Nairobi National Park, where the city feels far away and the calls of the bush arrive before the safari has even begun.

The rest of the evening is free, to rest and to watch the light fade over the park.

A short flight from Wilson Airport heads south to Amboseli, and on a clear morning Kilimanjaro appears out of the window long before the airstrip does. The transfer to camp is a game drive in itself, and lunch follows on arrival.

In the afternoon the first game drive heads out among the elephant herds as they make their way toward the swamps, with the mountain rising behind them.

Amboseli's swamps are the heart of the park, fed from underground by water running off Kilimanjaro, and the full day is timed around them. The elephants arrive in the morning, walking in from the dry woodland in long lines, and spend the heat of the day drinking, bathing and feeding in the green water.

Drives run in the morning and afternoon, with buffalo, hippo, zebra and a great variety of birds around the swamps, and Kilimanjaro as the backdrop whenever the cloud lifts.

The flight connects through Wilson Airport and carries on north to Samburu, and the landscape changes completely: from Kilimanjaro's plains to the dry red country and doum palms of the north, cut through by the green line of the Ewaso Ng'iro River.

Lunch is taken on arrival, and the first game drive follows along the river, where elephant come down to drink in the afternoon.

Samburu's wildlife is its own, and the full day is spent finding it: the Grevy's zebra, with its fine stripes, the reticulated giraffe, the gerenuk, which stands on its hind legs to feed, the beisa oryx and the Somali ostrich.

Elephant, lion and leopard use the river too, and the drives follow them in the cooler hours of the morning and late afternoon, with the heat of the day spent at camp.

A flight south crosses the equator and the Rift Valley, trading Samburu's dry country for the long grass of the Maasai Mara, and the difference is obvious from the air. Lunch is at camp, and the first game drive follows in the afternoon.

The plains around camp are home to lion, cheetah, leopard and the great herds, and even a first drive here rarely comes back without a memorable sighting.

The first of two full days on the reserve starts at dawn, while the cats are still active: lions returning from the night's hunt, cheetah climbing onto a termite mound to scan the grass. The afternoon drive returns to the plains as the heat fades and the light turns warm.

The Mara's lion density is among the highest in Africa, and a full day here usually brings more than one pride.

The second full day on the reserve closes the Kenya part of the journey. The guide follows the herds and the cats wherever they are that morning, and in the migration months that can mean the crossings on the Mara River, where thousands of wildebeest plunge across past the crocodiles.

The evening is the last in Kenya, and a fine one for watching the sun set over the plains.

A long travel day, via Wilson and Kilimanjaro airports, crosses into Tanzania and on to the Serengeti, which is reached by late afternoon. The final flight, low over the plains, gives a first sense of just how vast they are.

The evening is spent settling into camp, for the first of three nights in the Serengeti.

The first of two full days on the Serengeti plains, with drives in the morning and afternoon following the herds of wildebeest, zebra and gazelle, and the lion, cheetah and hyena that live alongside them.

The kopjes, granite outcrops rising from the grass, are good places to look for resting lions and leopard, and the open plains around them for cheetah on the hunt. The scale of the place takes a while to sink in.

The second full day on the plains is built around the best of what the Serengeti offers that morning, whether that is a cheetah hunt, a pride with cubs, or the migrating herds on the move.

The evening is the last in the Serengeti, with the sounds of the plains close by, before the road turns east to Ngorongoro.

One last Serengeti game drive, and then the road east toward the highlands, with a picnic lunch along the way and wildlife viewing continuing as the plains give way to rising ground.

The rest of the afternoon is left free in the cool air of the Ngorongoro highlands, a welcome change after the heat of the plains.

The whole day is spent on the crater floor, with picnic lunches, among one of the densest concentrations of wildlife on earth, the Big Five included. Lion, buffalo, elephant and black rhino live inside the crater walls, with hippo in the pools and flamingos on the soda lake in the right season.

Optional activities in the highlands are available for anyone wanting more from the area.

The road leaves the highlands and runs east to Tarangire National Park, arriving in time for lunch. The landscape changes to dry, open woodland dotted with enormous baobabs, some of them many centuries old.

The afternoon game drive follows the elephants, which gather in large numbers along the Tarangire River, and the baobabs make a dramatic backdrop to every sighting.

Tarangire has one of the highest elephant densities in Tanzania, and a full day in the park is spent among them. The herds move down to the river through the day, and the drives follow them in the morning and the late afternoon.

Lion, leopard, giraffe, zebra and a huge variety of birds share the park, and the baobabs, their bark scarred where elephants have fed, give every scene a sense of great age.

The road returns to Arusha for an afternoon flight south to the Selous Game Reserve, and the landscape below changes again, to rivers, lakes and palm woodland.

A game drive follows on arrival, giving a first look at a reserve that feels wild and a very long way from anywhere.

The Selous is shaped by water, the Rufiji River and its chain of lakes, and the first of two full days follows it. Wild dogs, lion prides, elephant and buffalo all come to the water, and the river is crowded with hippo and crocodile.

Drives run in the morning and afternoon, and the river country, with its palms and sandbanks, makes for some of the most beautiful scenery of the whole safari.

The last full day in the Selous follows whatever the reserve has to offer. The guide can return to the best of the previous day's sightings, perhaps a pack of wild dogs or a pride at a kill, or explore a new stretch of river.

The evening is the last of the safari, a quiet one by the water after nineteen days across East Africa.

A flight returns to Dar es Salaam in time for the onward international connection.