rwanda

The gorilla permit is $1,500 a person and it is the fixed point everything else is built around. Lodges run from about $300 a night to over $3,000 at the top of the market, which is a wider range than any other country on our list.

A week combining gorillas with either the Nyungwe chimpanzees or Akagera generally comes to $8,000 to $20,000 a person all in, permits, rooms and private guiding included. A helicopter to Nyungwe costs real money and saves five hours of road, which is sometimes the right trade.

Five to seven days covers gorilla tracking and one other thing: chimpanzees in Nyungwe or plains game in Akagera. Ten days takes all three parks with time in Kigali.

We would rather you did two of them well than three in a hurry. The drives are long and beautiful, but they are still drives, and a day spent in a vehicle is a day not spent in a forest. The Congo Nile Trail adds about five days if you want to cycle or walk the lake.

By road, with a driver and guide, because domestic flights barely exist here. Kamembe, near Nyungwe, is the only airstrip with a scheduled service out of Kigali.

The roads are properly maintained and the drives take you through the terraced hills and the tea, which is a large part of what the country looks like. A helicopter charter cuts the long southern legs and costs accordingly. We say plainly which legs are worth flying and which are worth driving.

Because it fits. Gorillas, chimpanzees, plains game and a lake are all inside a country smaller than Wales, so a week here is a week of doing things rather than a week of moving between them.

The treks to the habituated gorilla families are usually under two hours, which matters more than it sounds if anyone in the party is unsure about the walking. Mgahinga over the border is our own favourite for the trek itself. The lodges at the top end are as good as any in Africa, which the permit price rather demands.

Up to two years ahead for June to September and December to January. Eight visitors a day see each gorilla family, so the arithmetic is unforgiving and the peak months fill first.

The shoulder months are easier to book and wetter underfoot. Given what a permit costs, it is worth building the trip around the dates you can get rather than hoping.

Uganda, by road from Volcanoes to Mgahinga, with Lake Bunyonyi in between for a day off. It is the natural pairing and it gives you two different gorilla experiences rather than the same one twice.

Tanzania is a short flight for the Serengeti or the south. Kenya connects through Nairobi. If the trip wants a beach at the end, Zanzibar comes through Dar es Salaam.