12 Days - Victoria Falls - Chobe - Masai Mara and Serengeti

Your safari begins the moment you land at Victoria Falls International Airport, where a transfer takes you straight to Bayete Guest Lodge to check in and rest before the afternoon's outing. As the light softens, you're collected for a sunset cruise on the Zambezi—hippo surfacing, a crocodile sliding off a sandbank, an elephant browsing the riverine bush, and a sky that turns the whole scene orange by the time you head back to shore.

After breakfast, you walk the rainforest trail along the rim of Victoria Falls with a guide—close enough that the mist drifts across the path and you feel the thunder underfoot as much as hear it. In the evening you're collected for the Boma, Victoria Falls' four-course feast of local dishes, campfire soup, a braai buffet, and a run of drumming, dance, and storytelling that goes well past dessert.

Breakfast, then the drive across the border into Botswana, where the rest of the morning belongs to a Chobe River cruise this stretch of river holds some of the densest elephant numbers in Africa, and it shows. Lunch is at a lodge on the riverbank, and by early afternoon you're back out in the 4x4 for a game drive through Chobe National Park before dinner and the night at Chobe Safari Lodge.

One more game drive at dawn mornings is when Chobe's wildlife is most active before you head back to the border and on to Victoria Falls Airport for an evening flight to Nairobi. You're met at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and taken to the Boma Hotel for the night, on a bed-and-breakfast basis

It's an early start for the drive to the Masai Mara—as the northern edge of the same ecosystem as the Serengeti, the Mara still holds wildlife in something close to the numbers that once moved across this part of Africa. You arrive in time for lunch, then head straight into an afternoon game drive before dinner at Zebra Plain Mara.

A full day out in the reserve, with a packed lunch so you don't have to break for camp. The Mara's black-maned lion gets most of the attention, but watch for cheetahs—some are relaxed enough to use your vehicle's shade or even its roof as a lookout post. Birders have recorded close to 500 species here, among them the Kori bustard, the world's heaviest flying bird.

One last game drive on your way out of the Mara, then the drive to the Isebania border and into Tanzania. It's a long day on the road, but the game viewing doesn't stop at the border—you'll likely see plenty before reaching Into Wild Serengeti Camp for dinner.

Breakfast, then out with a packed lunch to explore the acacia savannah of central and eastern Serengeti. You break for a picnic lunch mid-morning before continuing with an afternoon game drive, back at camp in time for dinner.

An early game drive at 6am, back at camp by quarter to nine to check out, then the drive to the rim of Ngorongoro Crater with game viewing and lunch along the way. You can route via Olduvai Gorge—the archaeological site tied to some of the earliest hominid fossil finds—at an extra cost, if you'd like. Dinner and the night are at Ngorongoro Rhino Lodge.

You descend onto the crater floor for a six-hour tour of this 100-square-mile caldera, one of the few places left where you have a real shot at seeing rhino alongside lion, elephant, and buffalo and the crater's large resident herds of zebra and wildebeest. Lunch is a picnic down on the floor. Late afternoon, you climb back out and drive to Karatu for dinner and the night at Farm of Dream Lodge.

A last morning of game viewing, this time among Tarangire's baobabs and elephant herds, with a picnic lunch in the park around 1pm before an afternoon game drive. Late afternoon, you drive to Arusha for your final night at Arusha Planet Lodge. 

Depending on your onward flight, you're picked up from your lodge and transferred to Arusha Airport for the journey home — twelve days and four countries behind you.