Land in Kigali, one of Africa's cleanest and safest capitals, where your Asante Tours representative meets you and transfers you privately to your hotel.

The evening is free to rest and adjust before the drive up to gorilla country tomorrow.

A morning city tour includes the Kigali Genocide Memorial — a sobering, essential stop that frames Rwanda's remarkable recovery.

In the afternoon, drive north through terraced hillsides to the foot of the Virunga volcanoes, arriving at your lodge in time for dinner.

An early briefing at park headquarters, then the trek into the bamboo and montane forest to spend one hour with a habituated mountain gorilla family — a silverback, mothers, and infants at close range.

The trek can take one to five hours depending on where the group has moved. Porters and walking sticks are available. Your gorilla permit is fully included.

A gentler morning trek to find troops of endangered golden monkeys leaping through the bamboo — playful, fast and very photogenic.

After the trek, drive back to Kigali for the night, ready for tomorrow's flight into Tanzania.

Fly east across Lake Victoria and into Tanzania, landing on a Serengeti airstrip where your guide is waiting with the safari vehicle.

The transfer to your lodge is the first game drive — out onto the plains that give the Serengeti its name.

A full day exploring the Serengeti — morning and afternoon game drives across the plains, along the rivers and around the kopjes where lions and leopards rest.

Depending on the season, the migration herds may be nearby; your guide reads their movement and the predators that follow.

A second full day to go deeper — following a specific pride, spending time at a hippo pool, or heading to a quieter sector with your guide.

Optional: a dawn hot-air balloon safari over the plains, followed by a champagne bush breakfast — ask your Destination Expert.

The drive out of the Serengeti stops at Olduvai Gorge, where some of the earliest evidence of human ancestors was uncovered. A resident guide brings the site and its small museum to life.

Climb up to the cool, forested rim of the Ngorongoro Crater for the night.

Descend to the crater floor for a full game drive. Black rhino, big-tusked elephants, lion prides, hippo and vast herds of grazers all live within the walls of this collapsed volcano.

A picnic lunch is taken by the hippo pool before the climb back to the rim, with the afternoon free to relax.

A final Tanzanian breakfast on the crater rim, then the drive east past Lake Manyara and the Rift Valley wall to Kilimanjaro International Airport.

Depart with the gorillas of the Virungas and the plains of the Serengeti in the same set of photographs. Kwaheri — safe travels.