Tanzania

Tanzania operates on a different scale entirely. The Serengeti alone is larger than Switzerland. The Ngorongoro Crater holds a complete ecosystem inside an ancient volcano. Zanzibar sits off the coast like a thought that wandered away from the mainland. You could spend a month here and feel you have only scratched the surface.

What Tanzania does particularly well is silence. In the southern parks, in the western wilderness, in the conservancies that surround the northern circuit, there are places where you can go an entire morning without seeing another vehicle. That kind of space is increasingly rare, and Tanzania has protected it.

The people here are some of the warmest in East Africa: the Chagga communities on Kilimanjaro's slopes, the Maasai who have coexisted with the Serengeti's wildlife for centuries, and the Hadzabe of Lake Eyasi, one of the last hunter-gatherer communities on the continent.

Six landscapes within one country: the Serengeti's endless plains and the stage for the Great Migration; the Ngorongoro Crater, a UNESCO World Heritage Site holding roughly 25,000 animals within a self-contained caldera ecosystem; Zanzibar's Stone Town and spice-trade history alongside the white sand of Nungwi and Kendwa; Tarangire's elephant herds and ancient baobabs, and Lake Manyara's tree-climbing lions; Ruaha and Nyerere in the south, holding roughly ten percent of the world's lion population and one of the continent's most significant African wild dog populations; and Mahale on Lake Tanganyika, reachable only by boat or charter aircraft, home to one of the largest habituated chimpanzee populations on earth.

22+ national parks and reserves, 38% of Tanzania's land under protection, and the same 1.9 million-strong wildebeest migration shared with Kenya's Maasai Mara.