Zambia

Lusaka is a rapidly developing African capital — the Manda Hill and Arcades shopping centres for orientation, the Kabwata Cultural Village (traditional craft market and village reconstruction, the best place to buy Zambian textiles, carvings and copper work), and the excellent Latitude 15 hotel for the night.

💡 Zambia is one of Africa’s most stable democracies — it has had peaceful transfers of power between opposing parties (1991, 2011, 2021) in a continent where this remains exceptional. The 2021 election, in which incumbent Edgar Lungu conceded to Hakainde Hichilema, was praised internationally as a model democratic transition.

1h flight from Lusaka to Mfuwe (MFU). South Luangwa National Park (9,059km², the most densely populated wildlife area in Africa by some measures) — where Norman Carr invented the walking safari in 1950, a tradition that has made South Luangwa the gold standard for bush walking worldwide. The afternoon game drive: leopards in the fever trees (the highest density in Africa), hippos in every pool.

💡 Norman Carr (1912–1997) invented the commercial walking safari at South Luangwa in 1950, accompanied by his two tame lions — the first time visitors were guided on foot through wild Africa as a commercial experience. He also created the first community wildlife area in Africa (Kakumbi, 1983), pioneering the model that links conservation to community income.

A full day walking safari with an armed ranger and tracker — 4–6 hours through the miombo and mopane woodland following tracks of elephant, leopard and lion. The experience of approaching a bull elephant at 15m on foot, reading tracks, and understanding the bush at ground level is entirely different from vehicle-based safari.

💡 South Luangwa’s walking safaris operate in an exclusive concession area surrounding each lodge — no other vehicles or guides enter. The lodge tracker reads the ground (spoor, broken vegetation, dung freshness, the direction of animal movement) and leads the guide to a viewpoint. The skill is to position walkers downwind and at a safe angle for observation.

The Luangwa River boat safari (hippo, crocodile, African skimmer and the Zambia’s finest congregation of waterbirds visible from a flat-bottomed boat in the dry season) and the night game drive (leopards hunting, civets, honey badgers, aardvark, and the bush entirely transformed by darkness). South Luangwa has more leopard per square kilometre than any other park in Africa.

💡 South Luangwa’s leopard density has been attributed to the abundance of impala (the primary prey), the thick riverine forest (ideal ambush terrain) and a long tradition of non-interference. Individual leopards have been tracked and named for decades by resident guides who know their territories, cubs and family histories.

1h charter from Mfuwe to Jeki airstrip. Lower Zambezi National Park (4,092km², the Zambezi River valley between Zambia and Zimbabwe, with the finest canoe safari in Africa — paddling in Canadian canoes at water level past elephants drinking, buffalo grazing the river edge, and hippos resting in the deeper channels).

💡 The Lower Zambezi canoe safari (2–5 days, camping on river islands) was pioneered by Canoeing Safari operator Simon Espley in the 1980s. Paddling silently at water level gives a perspective on elephants and buffalo that no vehicle or motorboat can replicate — the wildlife ignores canoes.

Tiger fishing (Hydrocynus vittatus — the most aggressive freshwater predatory fish, with razor teeth, fighting like a tarpon, found in the Zambezi from the delta to the falls) and a full day canoe on the Zambezi with a guided fishing and wildlife stop at Chiawa and Gwabi pools.

💡 The tigerfish was named by 19th-century European explorers who encountered it on the Zambezi and Limpopo — it hunts in packs, is capable of leaping clear of the water to take aerial prey (including small birds), and fights with a ferocity far exceeding its size (typically 2–6kg). Trophy specimens reach 15–20kg on the Lower Zambezi.

4h drive or 45-min flight to Livingstone. Victoria Falls from the Zambian side — the Devil’s Pool (a natural rock pool at the lip of the Eastern Cataract, where in low-water season swimmers can lie at the edge looking straight down), the Livingstone Museum (the finest museum in Zambia, with David Livingstone’s notebooks and the original objects from his Africa expeditions) and the bridge bungee. Fly from Livingstone (LVI).

💡 David Livingstone reached Victoria Falls on 16 November 1855 — the first European to see them, guided by the Kololo people. He named them after Queen Victoria. His notebook description: “scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.” He was buried in Westminster Abbey; his heart was buried separately under a tree at Chitambo, in central Zambia.