East Africa is home to some of the continent's most famous sights, but also some of its least explored corners. Kenya and Tanzania are rightly renowned for their wildlife, and a safari here simply must be on your bucket list; there's nothing quite like seeing lions and giraffes in their natural setting.

But there is far more to East Africa than the Masai Mara, including alluring islands such as Zanzibar, with its fascinating history of sultans and slave traders, and Madagascar, home to unique indigenous species such as the lemur, an animal not found on the African mainland in spite of its proximity.

Further east still are the scattered islands of the Indian Ocean, whose isolation has fostered a variety of indigenous bird and marine life unreplicated anywhere else on earth. The major tourist destinations of the Maldives and Mauritius are but a gateway to an extraordinary natural world, and as you travel to the remote islands of the Comores, Seychelles and Mascarenes you will view some of the world's most endangered species.