rwanda, tanzania & kenya: gorillas, herds and the chyulus

Less than three countries suggest, though both international legs go by air.

Rwanda is road: Kigali to the volcanoes takes two and a half to three hours, with the lodge about an hour beyond the park headquarters.

Between Rwanda and Tanzania our page does not fix the routing, and we would not want it to before we see when you are going, so that connection is settled as we build the plan.

The Serengeti to the Maasai Mara cannot be driven straight across, because the two parks share no border post that visitors may use; the scheduled safari aircraft route through the border airstrips instead and take roughly three to five hours strip to strip.

Those flights allow 15 kilograms each, soft-sided, with cabin bags counted in, and they often call somewhere on the way.

Two, if you use the joint one.

Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda share one visa, issued once and good for several entries, so it can carry both your arrival in Kigali and your return into Kenya after Tanzania, which is what makes it worth the paperwork on a route shaped like this.

Tanzania sits outside it and runs a visa of its own, best obtained online in advance, which is what both the British and the Tanzanian government sites tell you to do.

If you would rather hold separate visas, Kenya now runs an electronic travel authorisation that has to be applied for in advance, with two weeks ahead the official suggestion. Passports need six months left and blank pages.

What applies depends on the passport you hold, and we set out the current requirements for yours at the time of booking.

Not expert, which is unusual for riding in big game country.

Less experienced riders are welcome on a quiet ride, and there is a weight limit of 95 kilograms. That is gentler than the riding safaris in the Okavango or on the Mara plains, where you need to be able to gallop out of trouble, and it comes from the ground itself: open hills, good footing and long views.

Confident riders can go further and faster. The reason to be on a horse at all is that zebra, giraffe and antelope treat you as another grazing animal and let you come closer than a vehicle can.

If nobody rides, the same days work on foot, on a mountain bike or from the vehicle.

Often, but never to order.

The mountain makes its own weather and spends much of the day under cloud. We find it shows itself most reliably in two windows, at sunrise and at sunset, which is exactly when you are out on a horse or back on the deck with a drink.

Three nights give you six of those windows, so the odds over a stay are good even when a particular morning comes up blank. The trick is to wait for it and not chase it.

Clear mornings come more often in the dry months, which is when we would put this route anyway. The waterhole in front of camp gives you something to watch while the cloud makes up its mind.

Slow and close up, and it is the reason the Tanzanian nights sit where they do.

The park allows walking in its northern and eastern reaches with an armed ranger alongside the camp's own guide, and its published tariff splits walks into short ones of one to four hours and long ones beyond that, which is the range our days describe.

Distance is not the point. A morning may cover a few kilometres with long stops at tracks, dung, bones and the small things you would never notice from a vehicle, so ordinary fitness and boots you have already worn in are enough.

The park prices walks for children of 12 and over, and camps set their own limits on top of that, so tell us the ages. Game drives still run morning and afternoon.

Three months do all the work here.

July, August and September are rated at the top of our scale at every stop, which is rare on a route this long: dry trails on the volcanoes, the herds in the northern Serengeti and then on the Mara plains, and clear air over the Chyulu Hills.

October holds up well in Kenya and Tanzania as Rwanda turns wetter. June is a halfway month, strong in Rwanda and the Chyulus and early for the herds.

January and February are dry and rate well for the gorillas, the Mara and the Chyulus, but the wildebeest have moved to the southern Serengeti by then, so we would shift the mobile camp's nights to follow them.

April and May are the months to leave alone. The wetter months bring easier gorilla permits, green plains, newborn antelope and fewer vehicles.