The Itinerary Africa
Closer than it looks, and easier to reach than most expect.
North Africa
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Algeria in 8 days: Roman cities, the Casbah and the M'zab valley
Africa's largest country holds Roman towns more complete than anything in Italy, a UNESCO casbah above the Mediterranean, and five fortified desert towns built by a breakaway Islamic sect a thousand years ago — behind a visa process and a cash economy that both need understanding first.
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Cairo in 2 days: Giza, the Grand Egyptian Museum and the khan
Two days that put the plateau at dawn and the Grand Egyptian Museum in the afternoon, then give the second day to Islamic Cairo. Camel prices agreed in advance, which ticket covers what, and where to stay so the morning works.
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Egypt in 5 days: Cairo, Giza and a flying visit to Luxor
Five days gets you the Giza plateau, the Grand Egyptian Museum and two nights in Luxor. It does not get you Aswan, Abu Simbel or a Nile cruise, and this guide is honest about which of Luxor's tombs are worth the separate tickets when you only have one morning.
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Egypt in 7 days: Cairo, Giza and Luxor
A week is enough for Cairo, the pyramid fields and three days in Luxor — the greatest concentration of monuments anywhere on earth. The Grand Egyptian Museum, the Valley of the Kings tickets that work differently from everything else, and why the cruise belongs on the ten-day trip.
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Egypt in 10 days: Cairo and the Nile
The oldest trip on earth, run like clockwork: the Pyramids at gate-opening, Tutankhamun's whole treasury in the new Grand Egyptian Museum, four nights floating Luxor to Aswan past temples that predate everything you've ever seen, and the sunrise colossi of Abu Simbel — with the baksheesh decoder, the card-only ticket update, and every classic hustle pre-empted.
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Libya in 9 days: Leptis Magna, Ghadamès and the Acacus rock art
A Roman city an emperor rebuilt as a monument to his own birthplace and the sand then buried for a thousand years, a covered desert town you walk through in shade at midday, and twelve thousand years of painted rock — in a country divided between two governments where every advisory says do not go.
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The High Atlas and Essaouira in 8 days: Marrakech, mountains, Atlantic
Marrakech, then two days trekking Berber villages in the High Atlas, then the windy Atlantic at Essaouira. Why a guide is required above Imlil, when the passes hold snow, and how the medina's faux-guides actually work.
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Morocco in 10 days: Marrakech, the Sahara and Fes
The full Morocco arc: Marrakech's drumming square and blue gardens, over the Atlas to a night among Sahara dunes (camels, drums, the Milky Way), the medieval maze of Fes, a blue town in the mountains and a mosque on the ocean — with the e-visa Indians now get directly, the haggling rulebook, and every classic hustle answered in advance.
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Morocco and Andalusia in 13 days: the Alhambra, the Mezquita, Fez and Marrakech
Al-Andalus and the Maghreb were the same world for eight centuries, and the Strait is narrow enough to see across. Horseshoe arches in a Spanish cathedral, a palace of carved stucco above Granada, and then a ferry to the medinas the same craftsmen came from.
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Sudan in 8 days: Meroë, Jebel Barkal and the pyramids nobody goes to — and the war that closed them
Around two hundred steep-sided pyramids built by the kings and queens of Kush, a holy mountain the pharaohs claimed as the birthplace of Amun, and a Sufi gathering that fills a graveyard every Friday — in a country that has been at war with itself since April 2023.
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Tunisia in 9 days: Carthage, the Sahara and the coast
The cheapest Mediterranean country with Roman cities better preserved than most of Italy's: a colosseum that seats 35,000 in a small town, mosaics from Carthage, a salt lake you drive across, underground Berber houses used as Star Wars sets, and an island with a blue-and-white medina.
West Africa
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Benin in 7 days: Ganvié, Ouidah and the palaces of Dahomey
A lake town where twenty thousand people live above the water and trade from canoes, the port a million captives were shipped from, the palaces of a kingdom whose army included a regiment of women — and the January festival that is the single best week to see any of it.
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Burkina Faso in 8 days: Bobo-Dioulasso, the Sindou peaks and Loropéni
A hand-moulded mosque rebuilt by its own neighbourhood every year, sandstone blades standing out of the bush, hippos in a lake you reach by dugout, and thousand-year-old stone walls nobody can fully explain — in a country where armed groups hold a large share of the territory and every government says so.
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Cape Verde in 9 days: Mindelo, Santo Antão and Cidade Velha
The islands sold as winter sun, done the other way: Mindelo's music bars where morna was invented, a neighbouring island with no airport and some of the best ridge walking in the Atlantic, and the first European colonial town in the tropics with its whipping post still standing in the square.
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Gambia in 7 days: the river, Kunta Kinteh Island and 500 bird species
A country that is essentially a river with banks, holding more than five hundred bird species, the island captives were shipped from, chimpanzees released onto river islands, and stone circles raised over a thousand years ago.
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Ghana in 9 days: Accra, the slave castles and the Volta
West Africa's most straightforward country to travel, and the one where the Atlantic slave trade is not a museum subject but a set of buildings you walk through — Cape Coast and Elmina, the dungeons and the Door of No Return, alongside Ashanti goldweights, a rainforest canopy walk and the Volta's waterfalls.
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Guinea in 8 days: the Fouta Djallon, Ditinn Falls and the Îles de Los
A sandstone plateau cut into canyons and waterfalls, where the Niger, the Senegal and the Gambia all begin — the best hiking in West Africa, reached through a capital on a peninsula and done almost entirely on foot with Fula guides.
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Guinea-Bissau in 7 days: the Bijagós islands, saltwater hippos and Bissau
Eighty-eight islands where hippos have adapted to salt water, green turtles nest in their thousands, and a matriarchal society still chooses its own husbands and runs its own religion — in a country most people could not place on a map.
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Ivory Coast in 8 days: the world's largest church, Grand-Bassam and the mountains of Man
A replica of St Peter's built larger than the original in the founding president's home village, a UNESCO colonial quarter crumbling on a lagoon, stilt dancers in the western mountains, and the city West Africa actually runs on.
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Liberia in 7 days: Robertsport's surf, Monrovia and the Sapo rainforest
West Africa's best surf breaking onto an empty beach, a capital of ruined mansions and American street names, and the second-largest block of rainforest left in the region — in a country that was founded in 1822 by people who had been enslaved in America.
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Mali in 7 days: Bamako, Ségou and the mosque at Djenné — and the three-quarters you cannot reach
A mosque of hand-moulded earth that its whole town replasters in a single morning, the river that made three empires rich, and the music this country exports to the world — alongside Timbuktu, Gao and the Dogon cliffs, which are UNESCO-listed, extraordinary, and currently unreachable.
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Mauritania in 7 days: the iron ore train, Chinguetti and the Adrar
A two-kilometre iron ore train you can ride for free on the open wagons, medieval Saharan libraries still held by the families who wrote them, and a coast where fishermen work with wild dolphins — in a country almost nobody visits.
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Niger in 8 days: Agadez, the last wild giraffes of West Africa and the Aïr
A Tuareg caravan city with a mosque of earth and palm wood at its centre, a herd of pale giraffes that live among farmers rather than in a park and exist nowhere else, and a desert massif the size of Switzerland — in a country under military rule where most of the map carries a warning.
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Nigeria in 8 days: Lagos, the Osun-Osogbo grove and the Benin bronzes
A sacred forest of Yoruba shrines rebuilt by an Austrian artist, the city whose bronzes forced European museums into a reckoning, and the loudest, fastest, most consequential city on the continent — routed deliberately clear of the regions that carry warnings.
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São Tomé and Príncipe in 7 days: Pico Cão Grande, the roças and Príncipe
Two equatorial islands of cocoa estates going back to the jungle, a 370-metre volcanic plug standing out of the forest, beaches where turtles nest, and the plantation where a 1919 eclipse photograph confirmed Einstein was right.
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Senegal in 9 days: Dakar, Gorée, Saint-Louis and the Sine-Saloum
West Africa's most confident country: an island twenty minutes off Dakar where the House of Slaves faces the Atlantic, a crumbling French colonial capital on a sandbar, a bird sanctuary holding a million migrants from Europe, and a mangrove delta you cross by pirogue past islands made entirely of shells.
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Sierra Leone in 8 days: the peninsula beaches, Tiwai Island and Freetown
Mountains dropping straight into the Atlantic on a peninsula of near-empty beaches, a river island with one of the highest primate densities measured anywhere, and a city founded by freed slaves — in a country that has spent twenty years putting itself back together.
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Togo in 7 days: Koutammakou's tower-houses, Kpalimé and the fetish market
Two-storey fortified houses of mud and straw that families still live in, a hill country of waterfalls and coffee, and a market in the capital selling the raw materials of Vodun by the sackful — in a country you can drive end to end in a day.
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West Africa in 12 days: Ghana's forts, Togo's hills and the Vodun coast of Benin
Castles on a surf beach that a million people were shipped from, an Ashanti kingdom that fought the British to a standstill, a lake town of twenty thousand on stilts, and the birthplace of a religion that crossed the Atlantic and came back.
Central Africa
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Cameroon in 8 days: Kribi's beaches, the Bamoun palace and the western highlands
A river that drops straight into the Atlantic over a rock shelf, a 1917 palace where the Bamoun sultans still hold court, volcanic highlands of crater lakes and chiefdoms — routed deliberately around the three regions that carry travel warnings.
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Central African Republic in 8 days: Dzanga Bai, forest elephants and the BaAka
A mineral clearing in the Congo Basin where forest elephants arrive in their dozens and can actually be seen, western lowland gorillas tracked on foot with BaAka guides, and a country most of which is held by armed groups and cannot be entered.
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Chad in 9 days: the Ennedi arches, the Lakes of Ounianga and Zakouma
Sandstone arches and towers across a massif the size of Switzerland, a canyon holding the last desert crocodiles in the Sahara, a chain of lakes that should not exist, and a park where elephants went from four thousand to four hundred and are climbing back.
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DR Congo in 7 days: Kinshasa, the bonobos of Lola ya Bonobo and the river — and the east you cannot reach
An ape that exists on one side of one river and nowhere else on earth, a sanctuary outside a city of seventeen million, and the rumba that half a continent dances to — alongside Virunga's gorillas and Nyiragongo's lava lake, which are the country's great draw and are currently closed.
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Equatorial Guinea in 6 days: Bioko's volcano, Malabo and the Monte Alén forest
A volcanic island of cloud forest and black-sand turtle beaches, a Spanish colonial capital on the crater rim, and mainland rainforest holding gorillas and forest elephants — behind what has long been one of the hardest visas in Africa.
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Gabon in 8 days: Loango's beach elephants, Lopé's mandrills and the Ivindo falls
Eighty-five per cent rainforest and a president who turned a tenth of it into national parks overnight — giving you elephants and buffalo walking on the surf line, the largest primate gatherings on earth, and waterfalls almost nobody has stood in front of.
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Republic of the Congo in 7 days: Odzala's gorillas, forest baïs and Brazzaville
Habituated western lowland gorillas, forest clearings where elephants come out of the trees in daylight, and one of the least disturbed rainforests left — at a price that puts this among the most expensive weeks in Africa, which the guide states plainly rather than burying.
East Africa
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Burundi in 5 days: Lake Tanganyika, the royal drummers and the Kibira forest
A sand beach on a lake two kilometres deep, a sanctuary where the royal drummers perform a ritual that UNESCO protects, montane rainforest holding chimpanzees, and a disputed claim to the Nile's southernmost source — in one of the least visited countries in Africa.
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Djibouti in 6 days: Lake Assal, the chimneys of Lac Abbé and whale sharks
A salt lake 155 metres below sea level, a plain of steaming limestone chimneys where three tectonic plates are pulling apart, and a gulf that fills with juvenile whale sharks every winter — in a country the size of Wales that almost nobody visits for pleasure.
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Eritrea in 8 days: Asmara's modernism, the Massawa road and the Dahlak islands
A capital listed by UNESCO for its 1930s modernism — a petrol station shaped like an aeroplane, cinemas with their original seats — reached by a steam railway that climbs from the Red Sea, in one of the most closed countries on earth where every road out of the city needs a permit.
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Ethiopia in 7 days: Lalibela, Gondar and the Simien Mountains
Eleven churches cut downwards into solid rock eight centuries ago, a castle compound built by emperors in the 1600s, an escarpment where troops of gelada baboons graze at 3,000 metres, and the lake the Blue Nile flows out of — on the one route through Africa that is about buildings rather than animals.
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Ethiopia and Kenya in 14 days: Lalibela, the Omo valley and the Masai Mara
Eleven churches carved out of the ground rather than built on it, a valley where a dozen peoples live as they have for centuries, and then the Rift Valley running south into the Mara — two countries that share a geology and almost nothing else.
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Kenya in 7 days: Masai Mara and the Rift lakes
The safari the word was invented for: lion prides on the Mara's gold grass, a million wildebeest in migration season, breakfast with orphaned elephants in Nairobi and a walk among giraffes on a lake island — with Kenya's eTA, the new $200 park-fee reality and the camp-location trick that beats it.
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Kenya and Tanzania in 12 days: the Mara, the Serengeti, Ngorongoro and Zanzibar
The Mara and the Serengeti are one ecosystem with a border through the middle, and doing both is the only way to follow the herds rather than hope. Then a volcanic caldera with its own resident lions, and an Indian Ocean island to stop moving on.
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Rwanda in 8 days: gorillas, Nyungwe and Lake Kivu
An hour with a gorilla family on a forested volcano, and a country that has made itself one of Africa's easiest to travel: chimpanzees in a montane rainforest, a canopy walkway over the treetops, a lake with no crocodiles, and a memorial that should be visited first — with the permit reality stated plainly.
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Rwanda and Uganda in 10 days: gorillas twice, chimpanzees and the Rift Valley
The mountain gorilla lives in one forest split across three borders, and this is the two halves of it you can reach — a steep hour in Rwandan bamboo and a hard one in Ugandan rainforest, with chimpanzees, tree-climbing lions and the Rift Valley in between.
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Somalia in 7 days: Laas Geel, Hargeisa and the Berbera coast
Rock shelters holding some of the best-preserved prehistoric art in Africa, a port the Ottomans and the British both wanted, and a self-declared republic that no country recognises and that functions anyway — in a country most governments tell you not to enter at all.
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South Sudan in 8 days: the Mundari cattle camps and the largest land migration on earth
A migration of six million antelope that nobody had counted until an aerial survey in 2023 found it was the largest on earth, and cattle camps where herders sleep among three-metre horns in smoke from dung fires — in the world's youngest country, which almost no one visits.
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Tanzania in 9 days: Serengeti safari and Zanzibar
The bush-and-beach original: lion country that rolls to every horizon, a wildlife-packed volcanic crater, then a spice island of carved doors and blue-white beaches — with the migration's monthly map, the crater-fee maths and Zanzibar's mandatory $44 insurance decoded.
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Uganda in 10 days: gorillas, chimps and the Nile
The same mountain gorillas as Rwanda at roughly half the permit price, plus chimpanzees in a rainforest, tree-climbing lions on a savanna crater floor, and a lake with no bilharzia at the end of it — with the honest trade-off, which is a much longer drive.
Southern Africa
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Angola in 8 days: Kalandula Falls, the Tundavala gap and the Namibe desert
A waterfall four hundred metres wide, an escarpment that simply stops and drops a kilometre, a desert where plants live two thousand years, and a Portuguese colonial coast — in a country that quietly dropped its tourist visa and that almost nobody has got round to visiting yet.
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Botswana in 9 days: the Okavango Delta and Chobe
A river that never reaches the sea, and the wildlife that gathers where it spreads out: mokoro channels at water level, Moremi's floodplains, and Chobe's elephant herds coming to drink at dusk — with the honest version of what a Botswana safari costs, why it costs that, and the season that decides everything.
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Eswatini in 5 days: black rhino at Mkhaya, Malolotja's ridges and the Ezulwini valley
A kingdom the size of Wales where you can cycle through a reserve full of antelope because nothing there eats you, track black rhino on foot an hour away, and stand on a granite dome older than almost any rock on earth.
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Lesotho in 6 days: Sani Pass, Maletsunyane Falls and the Kingdom in the Sky
A whole country higher than almost anywhere else is at its lowest point, with a 192-metre waterfall you can abseil beside, a mountain pass that needs four-wheel drive to climb, and horses as the sensible way to get around.
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Malawi in 9 days: Liwonde's elephants, Mount Mulanje and the lake
A lake holding more species of fish than any other on earth, two national parks rebuilt from near-empty within a decade, and a granite massif rising three thousand metres straight off the plain — in the country that calls itself the warm heart of Africa and largely earns it.
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Mozambique in 9 days: Tofo's whale sharks, Bazaruto's dunes and Maputo
One of the few places on earth where whale sharks are seen year-round, an archipelago of dunes and sandbanks holding the region's last viable dugong population, and a Portuguese capital with the best seafood on the continent — routed deliberately clear of the north.
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Namibia in 10 days: Sossusvlei, Swakopmund and Etosha
The great self-drive: red dunes you climb before sunrise, a skeleton coast where the desert meets cold Atlantic fog, and a salt pan where the animals come to you at waterholes — with the gravel-road rules, the two spare tyres, and the fuel-and-distance planning that this trip genuinely requires.
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The Garden Route in 9 days: Cape Town to Addo, malaria-free
The coast road east from Cape Town, with whales at Hermanus, the Knysna lagoon, Tsitsikamma's forest and a malaria-free Big Five park at the end. Why this is the easiest self-drive in Africa, when the whales are actually there, and the load-shedding that still shapes an evening.
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South Africa in 10 days: Cape Town and a Kruger safari
The two-in-one trip nothing else matches: a mountain-backed city with penguins on the beach, then a flight that lands inside a national park the size of a country — with the brand-new online ETA decoded, the safety rules locals actually follow, and the honest maths of a Big Five safari.
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South Africa and Mauritius in 12 days: Cape Town, a safari and an island
Four days in Cape Town and the Winelands, three on safari in the Kruger, then four on a Mauritian beach. Why the malaria question decides which reserve you book, what a lodge rate includes that a hotel rate does not, and the two seasons that do not overlap.
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Southern Africa in 18 days: Cape Town, Sossusvlei, Etosha and the Okavango by road
Three countries in one vehicle: a city under a flat mountain, the highest dunes on earth, a salt pan you can see from space, and a delta that floods when Angola's rain arrives six months late — driven rather than flown, on gravel, with a rooftop tent.
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Zambia in 9 days: the Falls, South Luangwa and the Lower Zambezi
The country that invented the walking safari, and still does it better than anywhere: three days in South Luangwa on foot with a guide and a scout, canoeing past elephant on the Lower Zambezi, and Victoria Falls from the side where you can stand on the lip of it.
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Zambia and Zimbabwe in 10 days: both sides of Victoria Falls, Hwange and South Luangwa
A mile-wide curtain of water you can see from two countries and swim to the lip of, the largest elephant concentration in Africa an hour across the border, and the valley where walking safaris were invented and are still done best.
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Zimbabwe in 8 days: Victoria Falls, Hwange and Matobo
The largest sheet of falling water on earth, and a country that gets overlooked beside it: a rainforest soaked by permanent spray, elephant herds at Hwange's pumped waterholes, and granite hills full of rock art and rhino — with the season that decides whether the Falls thunder or trickle, and the currency situation stated plainly.
Indian Ocean Islands
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Comoros in 6 days: Karthala's crater, Mohéli's turtles and the perfume islands
An archipelago between Madagascar and Mozambique with a volcano whose crater is three kilometres across, a beach where green turtles come ashore nightly, and ylang-ylang fields that supply the world's perfume houses — reached by almost nobody.
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Madagascar in 12 days: lemurs, baobabs and the Tsingy
An island that broke away from Africa 160 million years ago and evolved on its own: lemurs that exist nowhere else, a limestone forest of stone needles, and an avenue of baobabs at sunset — with the honest version of the roads, which are the single biggest thing to plan around.
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Mauritius honeymoon in 6 days: the north, Le Morne and a catamaran
Six days split between the sheltered north and the dramatic southwest under Le Morne, with a catamaran day to the islands and the Chamarel waterfall and coloured earths on the drive between them. Why the island has two climates at once, and which side to end on.
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Mauritius in 8 days: the two-base island loop
The island where India meets Africa in the middle of the ocean: sand in seven colours, a sacred lake with a 33-metre Shiva, catamaran days and a mountain the UNESCO list bows to — visa-free for most passports, and cheaper than it photographs.
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Seychelles honeymoon in 5 days: Mahé, Praslin and La Digue
Five days across two islands and a day trip to a third: Mahé's beaches and the ferry to Praslin for the Vallée de Mai, then La Digue by bicycle for Anse Source d'Argent. The ferry timetable is the itinerary here, and the islands are expensive in ways that are easy to design around.
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Seychelles in 8 days: Mahé, Praslin and La Digue
The one country that lets everyone in without a visa: three islands by ferry, the beach every screensaver stole, a prehistoric palm forest and giant tortoises who own the road — with the self-catering tricks that make the Indian Ocean's priciest postcard surprisingly affordable.
