Zanzibar

After a week of dust and early starts, Zanzibar is the exhale. The archipelago sits forty kilometres off the Tanzanian coast, a low coral island fringed with white sand, warm shallow water and reefs that begin a short swim from shore.

Stone Town anchors it culturally. A thousand years of Swahili, Omani, Persian and Indian trade left a labyrinth of coral-rag lanes, carved doors, courtyard houses and a night market that smells of grilled octopus and cardamom. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and genuinely still a working town, not a museum.

Beyond the town the island slows right down: spice farms inland, Jozani's red colobus monkeys in the south, seaweed farmers wading the tidal flats in the east, and dhows sailing out of Nungwi as the sun drops. Three or four nights is usually the right ending to a safari.