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Travelling with my husband, Joe, I started off the trip to Montenegro by flying to Dubrovnik in Croatia, briefly braving the cruise ship hordes in this beautiful but overpriced and overcrowded city, before picking up a rental car and driving 17km to the Montenegro border for a quick crossing and then a slow, scenic drive around the Bay of Kotor, where the views got more spectacular around every bend in the winding road as we drove through seaside villages of old stone shuttered houses and terracotta roofs and gardens full of pomegranate trees heavy with fruit. Sitting under vines heavy with grapes and kiwi fruit, we had our first of many farm-to-table experiences in Montenegro over the next few days, as we drank homemade red wine and cherry rakija and devoured feasts of eggs from their chickens, veggies – tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, aubergines, potatoes – from their garden, goat’s cheese from their forest-foraging goats and olives and olive oil from their groves. We spent the next few days exploring the Lustica Peninsula by car, driving on tiny quiet roads past sleepy little villages, cypresses and groves of olive trees so old and gnarled that they looked like twisted kitka bread to get to tucked away beaches, like Zanijice with its curve of pebbles and family vibe, Miriste with a lovely restaurant right over the water, and our favourite, Uvala Veslo, which didn’t have a beach (or loungers or restaurants or many people) but instead there were cliffs for jumping off into the turquoise sea. We stopped off in the alpine-ish town of Kolasin (where I felt tempted to pick the pink apples having heavy on all the trees) to stock up on snacks for our hiking days ahead, and then took a rather white knucklely narrow road that switchbacked its way up and down a mountain – amazing views and beautiful villages where everyone seemed to be chopping wood for the fast approaching winter but some stressful driving trying to get past timber trucks – as we headed northeast towards the Prokletije Mountains, which border Albania and Kosovo.

The bush is thick, green and lush, water is plentiful, and the tens of thousands of elephants and other animals tend to stick in the middle of the park, where there are no roads and they don’t have to contend with being gawped at by camera-wielding safari tourists. Elephant’s Eye has just eight spacious rooms built on stilts overlooking a waterhole (populated by a pair of grey crowned cranes down for a migratory visit from Central Africa when we arrived) – wooden plank floors, thatch roofs and khaki canvas walls which open floor-to-ceiling with wraparound decks, outdoor showers, big bathtubs and even bigger beds, from where you can lie and gaze out on a sea of green. The intimage lodge is all understated, low-key luxury with a communal lounge with comfy big sofas, a sweet little bar and dining area with tables facing towards the outdoor fire that’s lit every night, and utterly charming staff who make you feel part of a big family. In between game (bird) drives and walks, we ate tomato pasta, savoury veggie-filled pancakes and homemade Amarula ice cream back at the lodge, relaxed at the natural water swimming pool (which the elephants and buffalos drink till empty during the dry season), took unplanned for siestas in bed, lulled to sleep by the whirr of crickets, did some bird watching from the couches in the lounge with a bowl of salted peanuts and cold Zambezi beers and visited the Painted Dog Conservation Centre to see the resident pair of beautiful (and highly endangered) creatures.

Today, the longest non-stop flight in the world – between Dallas and Sydney – is 13 730 kilometres and takes 17 hours and the biggest passenger plane – the Airbus A380 – can carry 853 people. Instead of marvelling at the remarkable technology that allows us and our 20 kilogram suitcases to fly across the globe in a matter of hours, we complain about the annoying airport security checks, the delays due to storms, the lack of leg room, the bland meals and extra charges for heavy baggage. When people first took to the skies they were utterly mesmerised by the view below them, but once the jumbo jet came along and the cost of air travel dropped significantly, the view from the plane window lost its appeal. We will pay a lot extra for a hotel room with a view of the sea, or book in advance for the table in the restaurant with the best vista but instead of marvelling at the kind of views once reserved for the birds most of us fill our hours of flying with work, movies, music, books and sleep.

A trip through national parks and wilderness areas of northern Botswana in rainy season: gliding through a channel of the Okavango Delta in a mokoro; flying above the Delta in a small helicopter above rivers and islets, water lily-studded lagoons and marshes full of birds; falling asleep in a canvas tent while lions roared outside; fuschia dawn skies; going on game drives for hours and not seeing another car; the sound of elephants wading through a stream in the dark; getting our Land Cruiser stuck in the muddy roads of Moremi and having to dig it out; giraffes, elephants, foxes, jackals, buffaloes, mongoose, hippos, red lechwe, zebra, wildebeest, hyena; Rex, our guide and driver, spotting a leopard tortoise the size of a palm in the middle of the road, stopping in time to help it cross; spectacular afternoon thunderstorms; baobabs full of leaves; flocks of yellow and white butterflies; the cry of fish eagles; a baby baboon doing a handstand on a picnic bench; one pink and purple sunset over the Chobe River that seemed to last forever; seeing two leopard lazing in a tree in the last moments of our last game drive in Chobe National Park; monkeys throwing seed pods at us from the roof of the Zimbabwean border post; standing under the mist of the Smoke that Thunders (Victoria Falls) and looking into a white roaring abyss. Find out more about this overland trip and other African safari trips Jenman offers here. Poling in fibreglass mokoros through a channel of the Okavango Delta Flying above the Okavango Delta in a four-seater helicopter, going up and down from 100 metres down to two metres above the groundExploring the community-owned Khwai concession, which borders on Chobe National Park Exploring Moremi Game Reserve, seeing elephants, buffalo, hippos and red lechwe, and getting stuck three times on muddy roads with deep puddles filled with rain water from a huge thunderstorm the night beforeDriving for nine hours under a huge sky of puffy white clouds through Chobe National Park to get from the southern end to the northern end, game viewing and rock art spotting along the way We reached northern Chobe National Park, which borders on Zambia, Nambia and Zimbabwe, exploring the park by land and by water, seeing two leopards lazing in a tree in the last moments of our last game drive and watching the best sunset of the trip on our river cruise Mosi-oa-Tunya: the Smoke that Thunders Google+