Kenya

Kenya is where the safari was invented, and it still does it better than almost anywhere.

In one country you get the Masai Mara’s big-cat plains and the river crossings, Amboseli’s great tuskers beneath Kilimanjaro, the dry north of Samburu, the private conservancies of Laikipia — Lewa, Ol Pejeta and their rhino — the high forests of the Aberdares and Mount Kenya, and a thousand-year-old Swahili coast running from Diani to Malindi. It all runs through Nairobi, the green capital and safari hub where nearly every trip begins and ends — the one city on Earth with a national park on its doorstep.

It is also one of the three countries where we run our own ground — our own guides and vehicles — so the timing, the routing and the judgement on a given morning are ours, not a booking handed to a stranger.