New Zealand: Two Islands Grand Tour, 12 Nights

Flights from India arrive via a Singapore or Gulf connection, usually in the morning after a long overnight leg. Check in, sleep off the worst of the jet lag, then walk the Viaduct Harbour and Wynyard Quarter in the evening light — the water is the point of Auckland, and dinner on the wharf makes an easy first night.

Up the 328-metre Sky Tower for the two-harbour view, then across town: the Auckland Domain and its museum with the country’s best Maori and Pacific collection, Mount Eden’s volcanic crater for the skyline photo, and Mission Bay beach in the afternoon. Dinner in Sandringham, where the Indian food is better than most of India’s big-city hotels will admit.

A forty-minute ferry across the Hauraki Gulf to Waiheke — vineyards, olive groves and beaches that feel a world away from the city. Oneroa beach and village in the morning, a vineyard lunch stop with tastings for those who want them, and the clifftop walk at Cable Bay before the ferry back.

South out of Auckland through green Waikato farmland to the Waitomo caves, where a silent boat drifts under a ceiling of thousands of glowworms. Continue to Rotorua by late afternoon — you will smell the sulphur before you arrive — and walk the lakefront and the steaming ground of Kuirau Park before dinner.

A morning in the Te Puia geothermal valley: the Pohutu geyser that spouts to thirty metres, boiling mud pools, and the national carving and weaving schools where Maori craft is taught, not just displayed. The evening is the trip’s set piece — a Maori village welcome, the haka at arm’s length, and a hangi dinner lifted steaming from the earth oven.

A short flight over Cook Strait swaps islands and saves two days of driving and a ferry. Christchurch by early afternoon: the punts on the Avon, the Botanic Gardens, and the rebuilt centre where shipping-container malls have given way to a genuinely handsome low-rise city. Ride the vintage tram loop if the legs are done.

Out to Akaroa on Banks Peninsula, a harbour town inside an old volcanic crater that the French tried to colonise — the street names survive. A harbour cruise looks for Hector’s dolphins, the world’s smallest, found only in these waters. Back over the hill by evening with the Canterbury plains spread out below.

Three hours southwest into the Mackenzie basin, where the land dries to gold and the lakes turn an unreal turquoise. The Church of the Good Shepherd on the Tekapo shore, lupins along the water in the early-summer weeks, and a soak in the hot pools as the light goes. After dark, this is a dark sky reserve — step outside and look up.

Along the shore of Lake Pukaki to Aoraki Mount Cook village, with the 3,724-metre summit filling the windscreen on a clear day. Walk an hour of the Hooker Valley Track to the swing bridge, lunch at the village, then south through the Lindis Pass and the Kawarau Gorge — past the original bungy bridge — into Queenstown by evening.

The Skyline gondola up Bob’s Peak for the view over town, lake and the Remarkables, with luge runs at the top that adults enjoy more than they planned to. The afternoon is yours on the lakefront — and this is the day to add a Shotover jet boat or, for the brave, the Kawarau bungy. We book either at the sharpest local rate.

The big one: through Te Anau and the Homer Tunnel into Fiordland, then two hours on the water beneath Mitre Peak, past seal colonies and under waterfalls that drench the bow rail. It is a long day — about twelve hours door to door — and worth every one of them. If rain comes, better still: the cliffs run with hundreds of temporary falls.

A gentle last full day. Morning in Arrowtown, the gold-rush village twenty minutes away, with its preserved Chinese miners’ settlement and lanes made for slow walking. The rest is unscheduled on purpose — a Gibbston valley wine stop, a lake cruise on the steamship, or simply the lakefront again. Pack tonight; the airport is ten minutes away.

Breakfast, a last look at the Remarkables, and the short transfer to Queenstown airport for the flight home via Auckland or an Australian connection. Landing in Queenstown’s mountain bowl was the trip’s first spectacle; taking off out of it is the last.