A Swahili trading island where Africa, Arabia, India and Europe have been folded together for a thousand years. Stone Town is a UNESCO labyrinth of coral-rag alleys, carved doors and former spice and slave markets that repays getting lost in. North and east the island turns to turquoise shallows and dhows: Nungwi, Paje for kitesurfing, and the spice farms in between.
Stone Town at dusk, then the beaches at Nungwi. The history here is heavy and important — take the slave market tour.
Spice farm tour was far better than it sounds. Perfect wind-down after the Serengeti.
The alleys are a maze and getting lost is the whole point. Beaches in the east are extraordinary.
Uganda1 dayUganda's capital, spread across green hills and moving at full volume. The Kasubi Tombs are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the burial ground of the Buganda kings, an extraordinary thatched structure that remains an active spiritual centre. A city day pairs it with the Uganda Museum, the Gaddafi National Mosque minaret for the view, and the controlled chaos of Owino market.
Rated 4.3 out of 5 from 3 reviews
Tanzania5 daysFourteen thousand square kilometres of grassland carrying the largest terrestrial mammal migration on earth. The name comes from the Maasai siringet — the place where the land runs on forever — and the plains genuinely deliver that. Where you go depends entirely on when you come: calving on the southern short-grass plains around February, the western corridor mid-year, the northern Mara River crossings from August.
Rated 5.0 out of 5 from 3 reviews
Tanzania3 daysThe world's largest intact volcanic caldera — 260 square kilometres of crater floor 600m below the rim, holding roughly 25,000 large animals that mostly never leave. It is the surest place in East Africa to see black rhino, and one of very few where lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhino occupy a single enclosed bowl. Descending through cloud forest at dawn into that natural amphitheatre is the moment people remember.
Rated 4.7 out of 5 from 3 reviews