Ten days, two countries, and a standard of travel I'm still measuring other trips against. The Tanzanian sunsets alone were worth the flight, and the Kenyan night sky afterward made the whole thing feel faintly unreal. Settle in for a moment while I go back through it. You don't land at a big airport for this. The plane sets you down on a small airstrip, and your guide is already waiting with a cold drink. Ours was called Joseph, and he had a way of appearing at exactly the right moment all week. The room was a tent in name only: a four poster bed, thick rugs underfoot, and a plunge pool facing out across the Serengeti plain. I stood at the edge of that pool for a good minute before I believed any of it. Dinner that first night was served on a deck of pale timber, and the chef came out to say the soup had been made that afternoon. The wildlife didn't disappoint. Lions sprawled in the grass as if the land had been signed over to them, elephant herds moved through the golden stuff in long lines, and a pair of zebras wandered close enough that I stopped counting stripes and just watched. What I hadn't expected was the quiet. Most mornings it was our vehicle alone, Joseph, and whatever happened to be crossing the track. He picked out things I'd have missed entirely, a dik dik frozen against the brush, a dung beetle rolling its prize along a rut. I said "good heavens" often enough that it became a joke between us. Then a small plane to Kenya, no terminal, no queue, twenty minutes in the air. The Maasai Mara looks different from Tanzania, more open and more dramatic, and the wildlife somehow more abundant. The lodge there had open fireplaces and dinners served outside under the stars, and the staff seemed to know what you wanted a beat before you did. The head waiter, a man named Daniel with thirty years on that stretch of the Mara, poured the coffee at breakfast and told us which crossings to watch. I thought about asking for a palm frond to be waved over me. Then I thought better of it. We caught the Great Migration in stages over three days, thousands of wildebeest moving north, dust hanging in the air behind them. Sundowners came at odd angles and improbable spots, gin and tonic in hand while the sky went orange and then purple and lions called from somewhere off to the left. You see this on television and think it might be nice one day. It's better in person, and stranger. Somewhere in there I lost my hat, a battered canvas thing, to a gust of wind on the open plain, and never saw it again. The tan will fade. The rest won't. I came home spoiled for ordinary holidays, which is a fine problem to carry around. Joseph texted a photo of the sunrise from camp the morning after we left, with the acacia on the ridge lit up like a lamp.