This one is for travellers who get restless sitting in a vehicle. Two days of it are spent on foot on the flanks of Mount Kenya, walking cedar and bamboo forest with colobus crashing overhead, up to moorland that feels nothing like the savannah below. You do not need climbing experience, just reasonable legs; the reward is dawn views of the twin peaks that most safari-goers never see.
Then the trip changes gear at Ol Pejeta, twenty minutes from Nanyuki: East Africa’s biggest black rhino population, the last two northern white rhinos on the planet, rescued chimpanzees, and a night game drive with a spotlight, which regularly turns up things you will never see by day.
Cross the equator at Nanyuki and settle into a foothills lodge, with a first guided forest walk before dinner.
A full day walking cedar forest trails, waterfalls and the Mau Mau caves, then a drive up to the moorland gate at 3,000 metres.
The twin summits of Batian and Nelion are sharpest at first light. After breakfast a short transfer brings you to Ol Pejeta for an afternoon Big Five game drive.
Rhino tracking with rangers, the northern white rhino enclosure and the chimpanzee sanctuary, then a night game drive that the national parks cannot offer.
A last dawn drive, then back to Nairobi by mid-afternoon.