The safari, then the spice coast, then granite and still water.
Kenya’s reserves are reached from Nairobi; Zanzibar lies off the Tanzanian coast to the south, and the Seychelles further out in the Indian Ocean. The order matters: the early mornings first, the beaches last.
WhenBest from June to October, the dry season in Kenya and on Zanzibar; October, when the Seychelles lie between the trade winds, suits all three.
01 — Kenya
Nairobi
A national park at the city’s edge, and the Masai Mara a short flight away.
Nairobi is East Africa’s hub, a highland city of gardens, markets and traffic with a national park inside its boundary, where giraffe and rhino graze against the skyline. It is the starting point for Kenya’s safari circuit — the Masai Mara, Amboseli under Kilimanjaro, the lakes of the Rift Valley — and for the coast at Mombasa and Diani.
Nairobi National Park
The Masai Mara
Amboseli
Karen and the giraffes
02 — Tanzania
Zanzibar
Stone Town’s carved doors, spice farms inland and dhows on a turquoise sea.
Zanzibar is the island off Tanzania where the Swahili coast, Arabia and India met over centuries of trade. Stone Town, its old capital, is a warren of coral-stone houses, carved doors and rooftop terraces; beyond it are spice farms, mangrove creeks and a coast of white beaches where the tide goes out for a kilometre and the dhows sail at sunset.
Stone Town
The beaches of the north
The east coast and the reef
A spice farm
03
The Seychelles
Granite boulders, palm forest and quiet beaches across the inner islands.
The Seychelles are a scatter of granite islands in the Indian Ocean north of Madagascar, older than most islands and shaped differently: pink boulders on white sand, forested peaks, and a palm that grows nowhere else. Mahé, Praslin and La Digue are the three most visitors move between.
