Madagascar

Miavana by Time + Tide, without rival — a private-island resort on Nosy Ankao off the north-east coast, reached only by helicopter. Its 14 beachfront villas are among the largest in the Indian Ocean, and the 'blue safari' programme pairs world-class diving and kiting with lemur walks and turtle-nesting beaches.

April through November — the long dry season — for diving, kiting and clear skies, with humpback whales passing July to September. Avoid the cyclone season from roughly January to March.

By the resort's own helicopters: about 30 minutes from Diego Suarez or an hour from Nosy Be, flying over reefs and rainforest. We coordinate international connections through Nosy Be or Antananarivo so the joins are seamless, and can add a mainland nature extension for the baobabs and lemur reserves.

Ten days at the very least, and a fortnight if you want both. Everything routes through Antananarivo and the island is enormous — 300km of road can swallow most of a day, so internal flights do the heavy lifting. Andasibe is the one park we routinely drive to from the capital, and the indri calling at dawn there is worth the early start. Everything else, you fly. A common shape is a few nights in the rainforest, then north to Miavana and a week of doing nothing whatsoever.

They aren't competing for the same trip. The Seychelles is a straightforward beach holiday: short transfers, and you are in the water within an hour of landing. Madagascar asks considerably more of you — longer journeys, internal flights, a degree of unpredictability. In return you get an island where most of the wildlife lives nowhere else on earth, and stretches of coast almost nobody has seen. Go to the Seychelles to switch off completely. Come to Madagascar when you want the travelling itself to be the point.

Always — and it is the thing most people get wrong. Domestic flights slip, and sometimes vanish altogether, with often only one service a day on a given route. Nobody should be flying from the coast to Antananarivo on the morning of a long-haul departure. We build in a night in the capital, occasionally two, before you fly home. It costs a hotel night and saves a rewritten ticket. Cancellation cover on your insurance matters more here than in almost any destination we send people to.