Your local guide wakes the island with you. We arrive at first light, while the ridge is still empty and the air is still cool, and climb the 800-step trail to the viewpoint that put Komodo on the world's screensavers — three curving bays, three different-coloured sands, meeting at one summit. Your guide sets the pace, carries water, finds the best light, and takes your photographs at the top so you're actually in your own memories instead of behind the camera. There are rest platforms the whole way up and no rush at any of them. If the climb isn't for you, the beach below is yours — snorkelling set and life jacket provided, as at every water stop today. By the time the first day boats appear on the horizon, you're already heading back down. This is the photograph you'll show people for the rest of your life. Come early, and the view is yours alone.

One of only a handful of pink beaches on earth — and your guide shows you exactly why, scooping up a handful of sand so you can see the crushed red coral running through the white. Then straight into the water. Your snorkelling set — mask, snorkel and fins in your size — and a life jacket are handed to you on board, included in your tour. Your guide fits your mask, checks the seal, then gets in the water first and stays alongside anyone snorkelling for the first time. This is the gentlest snorkel of the day: shallow, calm, bath-warm water over a reef that starts a few metres from the sand. Clownfish, parrotfish, blue starfish and soft coral gardens, all within your depth. Between swims, sunbathe on rose-coloured sand. Or just float. Barefoot on pink sand with a coral garden at your feet — this is the stop nobody wants to leave.

You are about to walk, on foot, through the territory of the largest lizard on the planet. Your local guide and an armed national park ranger accompany your group the whole way along the savannah trail — reading fresh tracks in the dust, explaining how a three-metre dragon hunts, and knowing exactly where they rest through the morning. We come mid-morning, when the dragons are still active and the trail is still cool, rather than in the flat heat of midday. Along the way: wild Timor deer, buffalo wallows, orange-footed scrubfowl, cockatoos overhead. Your ranger positions you for photographs at a safe distance and takes them himself. Nowhere else on earth can you do this. Around two thousand of these animals are left, and they live only here.

A sandbar in the middle of open ocean that exists only at low tide — a thin crescent of white sand rising out of turquoise water, with no island attached, no trees, and nothing on the horizon in any direction. Your guide times the visit to the tide chart so you arrive while the sand is still above water, then walks it with you end to end in about four minutes. On either side the water shifts from clear to pale blue to deep sapphire within a few steps. If you'd rather be in it than on it, your snorkelling set and life jacket come with you — the shallows around the bar are calm and clear. This is the jumping shot and the drone shot. Your guide takes both. A beach that disappears twice a day. You are standing somewhere that will be underwater by tonight

Manta rays with wingspans wider than a car glide beneath you here, feeding in the current. Your snorkelling set and life jacket are included and fitted before anyone enters the water. Your guide reads the current first, briefs the group on how to float still and let the mantas come to you, then gets in ahead of you and leads the swim — never chasing, never touching, always giving the animals room. If mantas are moving, he'll place you upstream so they pass directly underneath. Reef sharks, eagle rays and turtles are frequent company. A crew member stays in the water with anyone less confident. Your guide films it all on a GoPro and you get the footage the same evening. Two metres below you, a wild manta turns to look back. Nothing prepares you for the size of them.

The quiet one. Almost no day tours stop here, so this bay is usually yours alone — a sheltered cove where a wall of soft coral slopes away from the shallows in a slow drift of colour. Snorkelling set and life jacket included, as always. Your guide leads the drift along the reef edge, stopping to point out what most people swim straight past: nudibranchs, anemone shrimp, giant clams, moray eels tucked into coral heads, and schools of fusiliers turning together in the light. Calm and shallow enough for beginners, rich enough that experienced snorkellers have to be called back in. There's a small beach to rest on and shade to sit in. After a day of famous places, this is the one you'll call your favourite — and the only one with nobody else in it.

A small green hill rising straight out of clear water, ringed by a spit of white sand — the classic Komodo postcard, and the shortest climb of the day at around fifteen minutes to the top. Your guide walks it with you and takes the summit photograph looking down over your boat anchored in impossibly clear shallows. Afterwards, swim straight off the sandbar — snorkelling set and life jacket ready for you at the water's edge. Calm, warm and shallow: the ideal last unhurried float. This is also where the day changes pace. You step off the speedboat here and board your traditional wooden deck boat for the journey home. One short climb, one perfect view, and the moment the day slows down.

The finale — and the one nobody expects to become their favourite. As the sun drops behind the hills, thousands of giant flying foxes lift out of the mangroves on Kalong Island. Wave after wave of them, wingspans over a metre, streaming overhead against a pink and orange sky for twenty unbroken minutes. You watch from the open deck of a traditional wooden boat, cold drink in hand, bean bags underneath you. No engine noise, no cabin, nothing between you and the sky. Your guide explains where the colony heads each night, and why they leave in exactly that order. Then a slow cruise home under the first stars. Fifteen hours, nine islands, and it ends with a sky full of wings. This is why people come back.