Nine days is what it takes to see Kenya properly: and this is the circuit we recommend to anyone who wants to leave with a real sense of the country rather than just a list of parks.

We start in the north, in Samburu, where the landscape is completely different from anything else in Kenya: semi-arid, vast, and home to five animal species found nowhere else in the country. From there we visit Ol Pejeta on the Laikipia Plateau, home to the world's last two northern white rhinos and Kenya's largest black rhino population: with night game drives that reveal a completely different side of the conservancy.

We track south through the Rift Valley: Lake Nakuru for flamingoes and rhino, Lake Naivasha for the hippo boat ride and Crescent Island, and then the Masai Mara for the last two nights: the Big Five finale, the great predators, the Mara River. By day nine you will have seen more Kenya than most people see in three trips.