Babymoons

A babymoon is the one trip on this page with no ceremony in it. Nothing has to happen at seven o’clock. The whole job is to make the days easy and the travelling short, which is a different skill from building a safari and mostly consists of saying no to things.

So we plan it backwards from the transfers. How long from the airport to the room. How many flights, and how small the second one is. Whether the walk from reception involves steps, and how far it is to dinner at nine when you are hungry and cannot face the walk. Those are the questions that decide the week.

Why the coast usually wins

No five-thirty starts. No corrugated roads. A doctor within reach, a room you can be horizontal in at any hour, and a kitchen already used to feeding people off the schedule. Watamu, Diani and the islands all do this well, and so does a good lodge an hour from Nairobi if you would rather not fly at all.

The bush is not off the table. It is just a longer travelling day for a shorter stay, and the honest version is that most people who try both tell us afterwards the beach half was the point.

What we ask for on your behalf

Ground-floor room, near the restaurant, off the generator side. A bath. Extra pillows, which no camp minds and half of them forget. Somewhere to eat late. If the property cannot do it, we would rather know before you book than apologise for it after.

We also ask the dull questions: where the nearest clinic is, how long an evacuation would take, and what the property’s own policy is. Not to alarm anybody. It is a five-minute conversation that saves a bad hour.

The paperwork

Airlines, insurers and occasionally the property itself each set their own cut-off for flying while pregnant. They are different dates, they change, and the one that catches people out is the insurance rather than the airline. Send us your dates and your shortlist and we get the answers in writing.

Then we book the routing that keeps the travelling day short rather than the one that keeps it cheap.

Good to know

• Tell us the week you are in when you write. It changes what we suggest more than the budget does.
• One flight beats two. A road transfer that takes an hour beats a bush strip that takes three legs.
• Say what you cannot eat. Camp kitchens are small and they plan a day ahead.
• Travelling with an older child as well? Say so early. It is a different set of properties.