Someone from our team meets you as you come through arrivals at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and drives you to your hotel. However long the flight was, the rest of the day is yours: a hot shower, a cold drink and an early night before the safari begins.

If you land in the morning and still have energy, we can arrange the Giraffe Centre, where you feed endangered Rothschild's giraffe from a raised platform, eye to eye, or the Karen Blixen Museum. The Sheldrick elephant orphanage opens to visitors only from 11 am to noon and must be booked in advance, so tell us your flight time when you book and we will see whether it fits. Otherwise, rest: tomorrow starts early and ends on the Mara plains.

You leave after an early breakfast with your guide and the Land Cruiser that will be yours for the next ten days. Allow about six hours door to door from an airport hotel. Soon after the city thins out, the road reaches the edge of the Great Rift Valley and you stop at a viewpoint where the escarpment drops away to the valley floor far below. Then it is down into Maasai country, through the market town of Narok, and on towards the Mara.

You reach camp in time for lunch and a rest. At about four, when the heat eases, you head out on your first game drive. The Mara's grassland is open and gently rolling, so animals are easy to find: topi standing sentry on termite mounds, zebra and wildebeest grazing in long lines, giraffe browsing the lone acacias and, with luck, a pride of lions flat out in the grass.

The vehicle leaves the reserve at closing time, so you are back for a drink by the fire and dinner, with hyenas whooping somewhere out in the dark.

Today you go deep into the Mara. You set off at sunrise with breakfast and lunch packed in the cool box, which means you follow the animals rather than the clock. Early morning is when the big cats are still on the move and cheetahs climb onto termite mounds to scan the plains, so your guide follows sightings called in over the radio and their own reading of the land.

Around midday you eat in the shade, often near the Mara River, where hippos crowd the pools and Nile crocodiles lie motionless on the banks. From about July to October this is also where the wildebeest migration gathers to cross. Timing depends on the rains and no crossing is ever guaranteed, but when one happens it is loud, chaotic and never the same twice. Elephant, buffalo, hyena, jackal and a long list of birds fill the rest of the day.

You are back at camp in the late afternoon, with time for a shower before dinner. If you want to fly in the balloon tomorrow, it needs booking in advance, ideally when you confirm your safari, because seats sell out in peak season.

This is the morning for the optional hot-air balloon. You are collected before dawn, lift off as the sun comes up and drift for about an hour over the plains, watching herds scatter below and the balloon's shadow slide across the grass. You land to a bush breakfast, then your guide meets you and carries on with a game drive.

If you stay on the ground, you head out at first light instead, while the big cats are still moving, and come back for a late breakfast. The middle of the day is slow and hot, and that is the point: a swim, a book, a nap. Later you can visit a Maasai village near the reserve, where a family shows you inside their home, explains how cattle shape everything in their lives, and the young men show you the jumping dance.

Then one last afternoon drive, following the golden light until the reserve closes.

After breakfast you leave the Mara and drive back through Narok, then up across the high wheat and maize country of the Mau, a sharp change from the savannah. You reach Lake Nakuru National Park in time for a late lunch at your lodge.

Lake Nakuru is small, fenced and full of life, and it is one of the most reliable places in Kenya to see rhino. White rhino graze the open grass near the shore; the shyer black rhino keep to the thickets. The park is also a stronghold of the rare Rothschild's giraffe, and buffalo, waterbuck and baboons are everywhere. On your afternoon drive your guide takes you up to Baboon Cliff for the view over the whole lake.

A note on flamingos: their numbers rise and fall with the lake's water level, so some years the shore is pink and some years it is not. We will tell you what people are seeing before you travel.

Go out early. The first two hours of the day are your best chance of finding lions or a leopard among Lake Nakuru's yellow fever trees, and the rhino are out grazing in the cool. Back for breakfast, then a short, easy drive south to Lake Naivasha, arriving for lunch.

Naivasha is a freshwater lake fringed with papyrus and home to a large population of hippos. In the afternoon you can take a boat out among them and watch African fish eagles swoop to snatch fish from the surface, then step ashore on Crescent Island. With no big predators on the island, you walk on foot with a guide among giraffe, zebra, wildebeest and waterbuck. Or skip it all and sit by the lake with a drink.

After dark, hippos climb out of the lake to graze on the lawns of some lakeside lodges, Sopa among them, and staff walk you to your room at night.

This is the longest drive of the trip, so you leave straight after an early breakfast. You skirt Nairobi and head south-east into Maasai rangeland towards the Tanzanian border, stopping to stretch your legs and for lunch on the way. Allow about seven hours in all.

The reward comes as you near Amboseli. On a clear afternoon Kilimanjaro fills the southern sky, its summit often white with snow, and the first elephants appear on the dusty plain beneath it. You reach your lodge by late afternoon, in time for a shower, a sundowner and an early night.

If you would rather not spend the day in the car, this is the easiest leg to change: we can add a night in Nairobi to split the drive, or fly you from Nairobi to Amboseli.

Set your alarm. Kilimanjaro is usually clearest in the first hour after sunrise, before cloud builds around the summit, and that is when the classic picture happens: a line of elephants walking across the plain with Africa's highest mountain behind them.

Amboseli is famous for its elephants, and for good reason. Every day, families move from the dry plains into swamps fed by underground springs from Kilimanjaro, and you can sit quietly beside them as they feed, bathe and squabble. Lion, cheetah and hyena hunt here too, alongside buffalo, wildebeest, zebra, hippo and crowds of water birds. Lunch is usually a picnic at Observation Hill, with a view over the whole park, or back at your lodge if you prefer a rest.

The afternoon drive runs until the park closes, and the mountain sometimes shows itself again in the evening light.

One more early look at the mountain, then breakfast and on east. The road passes Kimana and runs along the Chyulu Hills, entering Tsavo West by Chyulu Gate, on the wilder, hillier side of the park: volcanic cones, black lava and thick bush. On the way in you stop at the Shetani lava flow, a field of black rock left by an eruption roughly two centuries ago; shetani means devil in Swahili. Allow four to five hours to your lodge, a little longer to lodges on the far side of the park.

After a late lunch at your lodge, you visit Mzima Springs if time allows; if the drive runs long, it is your first stop tomorrow morning. Water filtered through the Chyulu Hills rises here crystal clear into a chain of pools. A short trail leads to a viewing point over the pools, and to an underwater viewing chamber when it is open. With luck you watch hippos moving along the bottom and fish darting past the glass, while crocodiles bask on the banks outside.

Evenings in Tsavo are quieter than in the Mara. Several lodges here look straight onto a waterhole, so elephants and buffalo may come to drink while you eat dinner.

Tsavo West and Tsavo East together form Kenya's largest protected area, split in two by the Nairobi–Mombasa road and railway. Start with a short early game drive, or Mzima Springs if you missed it yesterday, then breakfast and the crossing from one park to the other. Allow four to five hours, including game viewing on the way. Tsavo East feels different straight away: flatter, drier and open to the horizon, with red earth that dusts everything it touches. The elephants are famous for it. They dust-bathe in the red soil to protect their skin, so whole herds look rust-coloured against the bush.

After lunch and a rest, your afternoon drive follows the Voi River and its waterholes. Near Aruba Dam you may find lion, buffalo, zebra and waterbuck, and dry-country animals such as gerenuk, lesser kudu and fringe-eared oryx that you are unlikely to see in the Mara. Ask your guide about the Tsavo man-eaters, the two lions that terrorised the railway builders in Tsavo in 1898.

At Luxury level the second Tsavo night is at Sarova Salt Lick, in the Taita Hills Wildlife Sanctuary on the edge of the Tsavo parks. The lodge stands on stilts above a floodlit waterhole, and your afternoon drive is in the sanctuary.

A last short game drive on the way out of the park, then you head for the coast. The country changes as you go: dry bush gives way to baobabs, then mango, cashew and coconut palms, and the air turns warm and heavy as you drop towards the Indian Ocean. You skirt Mombasa Island, crossing to the south coast by the Dongo Kundu bypass or the Likoni ferry, whichever is quicker on the day.

You arrive in the afternoon and say goodbye to your guide after ten days together. Then it is straight into swimwear. Diani's sand is white and fine, and a coral reef offshore breaks the waves, so the lagoon is calm and warm. At low tide you can wade out across the sand flats; at high tide it is perfect for a swim.

Stay on the beach for sunset, then dinner at your resort.

No alarm today. After ten days of early starts, breakfast is whenever you like and the day is yours.

For the ocean at its best, the classic day out is a dhow trip to Kisite-Mpunguti Marine Park, south of Diani near Shimoni. It starts early and includes about a 90-minute drive each way to Shimoni. You sail out on a traditional wooden boat, look for dolphins on the way, snorkel over coral gardens full of reef fish and finish with a seafood lunch on Wasini Island. Closer to your resort, you can snorkel or dive the Diani reef, take a kitesurfing lesson (the wind is most reliable from December to March and June to September), or walk in the forest with Colobus Conservation to see the Angolan colobus monkeys that live along this stretch of coast.

Or do none of it. A sunbed, a book, a swim and a cold drink as the sun goes down is a perfectly good plan.

Your last full day by the sea. Repeat the best of yesterday or try something new.

A few ideas. Walk the beach at low tide, when the sand stretches out towards the reef and fishermen come in on their outrigger canoes. Take a guided walk in the Kaya Kinondo sacred forest, protected for generations by the local Digo community. Spend a day inland at Shimba Hills National Reserve, the only place in Kenya to see sable antelope. Go out on a deep-sea fishing trip, or book an afternoon at a spa.

In the evening, a last dinner by the sea. If you would like a private table on the sand, tell us in advance and we will arrange it with the resort.

A last swim, then breakfast. When it is time, you are driven the short distance to Ukunda airstrip for your scheduled flight to Nairobi, with the coastline and then the Tsavo plains sliding past below the wing.

In Nairobi we meet you and take you to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for your flight home. We book the morning flight so that you reach Nairobi with time in hand. If your flight home leaves before about 8 pm, tell us when you book and we will plan the day with you, which may mean an extra night in Nairobi so you are never racing a connection. If you have hours to spare before a night flight, we can arrange a day room or a last outing to the Giraffe Centre or the Karen Blixen Museum. Please pack soft bags: luggage space on the Diani flight is limited.