South Africa: Kruger Safari & Cape Town Classic, 9 Nights

Flights from India arrive via a single Gulf or East African stop, usually by mid-afternoon. Transfer to Sandton, the safe modern district north of the centre, and shake the journey off with an easy evening on Nelson Mandela Square. The altitude — 1,750 metres — is why the first beer hits harder than expected.

The morning belongs to the Apartheid Museum, where your ticket assigns you a segregated entrance and the country’s story is told without flinching. Then into Soweto with a local guide: Vilakazi Street, where both Mandela and Archbishop Tutu lived, the Mandela House museum, and lunch at a township shisa nyama with the music up.

A five-hour drive east, dropping off the highveld through Dullstroom — trout dams, pancake shops and a whiff of Scotland — into the subtropical lowveld at Hazyview, ten minutes from the Kruger’s Phabeni gate. Early dinner and early bed: tomorrow starts before the sun.

Into the park at gate-opening in an open safari vehicle, with the whole day inside. Winter mornings are sharp and the animals are out: elephant and buffalo at the waterholes, giraffe against the thorn trees, lions if the radio crackles right, and always the wildcard of a leopard. Breakfast and lunch at rest camps inside the park; out by the evening curfew.

Up onto the escarpment for the Blyde River Canyon — the Three Rondavels viewpoint over a green canyon 750 metres deep, the swirl-carved Bourke’s Luck Potholes, and God’s Window, where on a clear day the view runs to Mozambique. Every stop is a short flat walk from the car park. Back to Hazyview for a braai dinner.

Drive back to Johannesburg after breakfast and board the two-hour evening flight to Cape Town. The approach over the city with Table Mountain lit by the last sun is the best free sight of the trip — ask for a window on the right. Check in near the V&A Waterfront.

Up the rotating cable car the first clear morning — the schedule flexes for the mountain’s weather, not the other way around. Afternoon in the painted lanes of the Bo-Kaap and the Company’s Garden, where the city began as a vegetable patch for passing ships in 1652. Sunset from Signal Hill with the Atlantic turning gold.

The peninsula loop: along the Atlantic through Hout Bay, over the cliff-hung Chapman’s Peak Drive, and down to Cape Point, where the funicular climbs to the old lighthouse above two colliding currents. Then Boulders Beach, where African penguins nest between the granite boulders an arm’s length from the boardwalk, and home past Kirstenbosch garden.

Out to Stellenbosch for a morning among the oaks and Cape Dutch gables, with a cellar tour and tasting at a family estate — grape juice poured as readily as wine for non-drinkers. Free afternoon: the Zeitz MOCAA art museum, the Two Oceans Aquarium, or simply the waterfront with the mountain behind it. Farewell dinner on the harbour.

A last waterfront breakfast and a morning for rooibos, biltong and protea-print souvenirs, then the transfer to Cape Town International for the flight home — no backtracking to Johannesburg needed.