Where to go, and how many days you need
Two areas, enough nights in each, beat a route that spends the week in airports and reception desks.
A useful first length
Two or three nights in one park is a taste. You will see something, and you will also feel that you left just as the place started to make sense. Four to six nights, split across two areas, is a more honest first safari.
Ten days is enough for a classic circuit: the Serengeti with the Ngorongoro highlands, the Mara with a night elsewhere in Kenya, or Kruger with Cape Town. Add three or four nights if you want a beach after the bush. Zanzibar, the Kenyan coast, Mozambique, and the islands all work that way.
Gorilla trekking needs its own time. You sleep near the forest, walk the next morning, and you should not plan a game drive the same afternoon. The Uganda and Rwanda sample trips on this site already include one permit per person in the from-price.
Matching a place to a reason
Choose the Mara or the Serengeti if the reason for the trip is big cats and, in the right months, the wildebeest. Choose Kruger or a private reserve beside it if you want classic wildlife with easier flights and the option of Cape Town or the winelands on the same ticket.
Choose Botswana if you want water, elephants, and smaller camps, and you accept that light aircraft are part of the journey. Choose Zambia if you want to walk. Choose Victoria Falls if the waterfall itself is the point, then add a park rather than treating the falls as a safari.
Namibia and parts of South Africa suit people who would rather drive. Madagascar is a different wildlife list: lemurs and forest, not the Big Five. Congo is a short, logistics-heavy forest trip, which is why its sample rate sits at the top of this site’s list.
How many camps
One camp for three nights, then a second camp, is usually better than a new bed every night. Transfers eat the best hours of the day, especially when they involve a flight, a border, or a long park road.
On a first trip, two wildlife areas are plenty. A third place is worth it when it is genuinely different: a beach, the falls, or a gorilla forest. It is rarely worth it when it is another savannah with the same animals and a new check-in.