The Retreats at Sayari Camp

The far north is a flight, not a drive: from Arusha the light aircraft reach Kogatende in around an hour and a half to two hours, and your villa's own guide collects you at the strip so the private vehicle starts working from the first minute. Connections from Kilimanjaro run through Arusha the same morning.

For a family filling a villa, a private charter often makes plain sense, a Cessna Caravan or the quicker Pilatus PC-12 flown to your own schedule. On the scheduled services pack soft duffels, fifteen kilograms per person with hand luggage inside the limit.

This is a malaria area and should be treated as one. The whole of mainland Tanzania under 1,800 metres carries a high risk rating from both the UK's official travel health service and the American CDC, and the Mara River country sits comfortably below that height, so tablets are normally recommended for adults and children alike.

A travel clinic will set the right course for each member of the family a few weeks before you leave. In camp, nets, repellent and long sleeves at dusk close the gap.

The camp closes for the April and May rains and runs from June through March. For the river crossings, July to October is the window, with August and September the heart of it, and because there are only two villas those weeks are often spoken for close to a year out.

June and November are the clever shoulders, migration energy without peak pressure, and December to March is the quiet, resident-game version of the north, villas easier to secure and the plains largely yours. Tell us what the trip is for and we will place the dates.

Five and up, and this is one of the easiest ways to do the Serengeti with children at all, because nothing is shared and nothing is scheduled. Your chef cooks what they will actually eat at the hour they will actually eat it, the vehicle goes out when they are fresh and comes home when they fade, and the villa absorbs an afternoon of downtime without anyone missing out.

Walking is reserved for twelve and over, so younger children stay with the drives. Give us the ages and we will shape the whole stay around them.

The villa with its dedicated host, chef, guide and vehicle, all meals, house drinks including the camp's own brewed beers and soft drinks, laundry, and the short transfer between Kogatende airstrip and camp. Champagne and the premium cellar sit outside the rate, as do balloon flights and the specialist photographic vehicle, both of which we can book ahead.

Park fees are charged per person for each day inside the Serengeti and go into your quote from the start, so the number we give you is complete.

Give it three nights at an absolute minimum, and four if the crossings are the reason you are coming. A crossing is not an event with a start time; herds mass at the banks, lose their nerve, drift away and surge back, sometimes across days, and the guests who see the full spectacle are the ones whose schedule could wait for it.

The villa's private vehicle is the other half of the equation, because you can hold your spot at the river through lunch while fixed-schedule camps head home. Patience here is rewarded like almost nowhere else in Africa.