Most people land at Kenneth Kaunda International Airport in Lusaka with two things on their list: Victoria Falls and a safari. By the time they leave, they realise Zambia had been quietly holding something back — two of the largest wildlife migrations on Earth, the birthplace of the walking safari, a prehistoric lake the size of a small country, and a patch of swamp forest where ten million bats turn the sky black at dusk. None of that is on most itineraries. This guide is an attempt to fix that.
Zambia became independent in 1964, with Kenneth Kaunda as its first president. English is the official language alongside ten widely spoken local languages including Bemba, Nyanja, Tonga and Lozi. Zambians are, by every measure we have encountered, among the warmest people on the continent — a genuinely underrated part of any trip here.
What sets Zambia apart from the better-known safari destinations in East Africa is space, solitude, and depth. Its 20 national parks and 34 game management areas cover roughly 30% of the country. In a typical week in South Luangwa, you may not see another vehicle at a sighting. That is not an accident — it is a deliberate consequence of how Zambia has chosen to manage its wilderness.
Practical Essentials Before You Go
Best Time to Visit
Zambia’s calendar splits into a dry season (May–October) and a wet season (November–April). The right time depends entirely on what you have come to see.
- Walking safaris & big game (May–October): The dry season strips back the bush, concentrates game around water sources, and makes on-foot movement safe and rewarding. South Luangwa, Kafue, and Lower Zambezi are at their best.
- Kasanka bat migration (late October–December): Peak numbers hit in November, coinciding with the first rains and the ripening of the musuku and waterberry fruits the bats feed on.
- Liuwa Plain wildebeest migration (November–mid-December): The herds arrive with the rains. The park closes December to March when flooding makes access impossible.
- Bangweulu shoebill stork (May–August): Dry season means receding water, accessible terrain, and reliable shoebill sightings by canoe.
- Devil’s Pool at Victoria Falls (July–September): Low water on the Zambian side means the natural infinity pool is swimmable. High water (February–May) gives the most dramatic views but closes the pool.
- Birdwatching (November–April): The wet season brings Palearctic migrants and the fullest diversity of species across every park.
Visas: The KAZA UniVisa Explained
If your itinerary includes both Zambia and Zimbabwe (which it should — the Victoria Falls experience spans both sides), the KAZA UniVisa is the most convenient option. At USD $50, it covers unlimited travel between the two countries and day trips into Botswana, for up to 30 days. It can be purchased online in advance via the Zambia eVisa portal or on arrival at approved entry points including Lusaka’s Kenneth Kaunda International Airport, the Victoria Falls Border Post, and Kazungula. A standard single-entry Zambia tourist visa also costs USD $50 if you are not crossing into Zimbabwe.
Yellow fever certificate: You must carry proof of vaccination if arriving from a country listed as a yellow fever transmission risk. Check the TravelHealthPro Zambia guide before travelling. Malaria prophylaxis is strongly recommended throughout the country.
Getting Around: Internal Flights vs. Self-Drive
Zambia is large — Lusaka to South Luangwa by road is roughly 472 miles (760 km) and can take 10 hours or more on mixed road surfaces. Internal flights transform the itinerary. Proflight Zambia, the country’s main domestic airline, flies from Lusaka to Livingstone (about 70 minutes), to Mfuwe for South Luangwa (about 75 minutes), and to Kasama as a gateway to the north. As of April 2025, Proflight doubled its Lusaka–Livingstone frequency to twice daily to accommodate safari season demand. Mfuwe flights are timed to land before midday so guests can make afternoon game drives. Book well ahead — seats sell out in peak season (June–October).
If you prefer to self-drive, a 4×4 with high clearance is not optional — it is a requirement for most parks, particularly in the wet season. Key considerations when hiring: confirmed breakdown cover, multiple drop-off locations, fuel tank policy, and whether the vehicle comes fitted with a rooftop tent if you plan to camp. We recommend comparing rates across a few operators and reading recent reviews specific to their 4×4 fleet, not their sedan range.
Currency: The local currency is the Zambian Kwacha (ZMW). Exchange rates shift constantly — check a live converter such as XE.com before you travel. USD is widely accepted at lodges and major tourist sites, but Kwacha is essential for local markets, fuel, and smaller purchases. Carry sufficient small-denomination Kwacha for tips and craft markets.
Lusaka
Most visitors treat Lusaka as a transit point. That is understandable — the national parks are the main event — but the capital rewards a day or two of genuine attention. It is one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities and has developed a cultural and culinary scene that has little in common with the Lusaka of a decade ago.
Lusaka National Museum
This is the right place to start. A museum visit before a safari is never wasted time — it gives you the language and the context for what you are about to see in the wild and in the villages. The Lusaka National Museum has two floors: the ground floor rotates exhibitions by local artists and cultural organisations (so what you see on your visit will differ from what is described in any guidebook, which is part of the point), and the upper floor covers precolonial, colonial, and post-colonial history in permanent displays. The witchcraft exhibit on the upper floor is consistently the most discussed section — a remarkably candid treatment of traditional belief systems that most national museums in the region would leave out entirely. Entrance costs approximately USD $5–6. Allow an hour, more if the guide has stories — and he will.
Munda Wanga Environmental Park
The name means “My Garden” in a linguistic family shared with Shona-speaking communities across the border in Zimbabwe (wangu in Shona; wanga here). The park is split between a botanical garden and a small zoo. The botanical garden is well maintained and a genuinely pleasant place to spend a morning. The zoo section is more variable in its upkeep — this is common in African urban parks where funding flows unevenly — but remains worth a walk through, particularly during weekend feeding sessions (2–3pm on Saturdays and Sundays), when the lions, hyenas, zebras, and warthogs are reliably active.
Kalimba Reptile Park
Located about 14 miles (23 km) from the National Museum (around 50 minutes in traffic), Kalimba Reptile Park is a combination of wildlife encounter, restaurant, and family activity centre. You can hold pythons, handle baby crocodiles, and meet the Egyptian spitting cobra. The restaurant serves crocodile-based dishes alongside a broader menu — it is reliably good and worth staying for lunch. Staff are knowledgeable and patient, particularly with guests who arrive with genuine questions about the animals. It is the best kind of reptile park: one where the staff make you feel that you are learning something, not just posing for photographs.
Lusaka National Park
Opened in 2015, this is Zambia’s newest national park and the only one within a city boundary. Do not expect the wildlife density of South Luangwa — the animal population is still being established and expanded. What you will find: zebras, impalas, giraffes, antelopes, and a small white rhino enclosure (poaching has decimated rhino populations elsewhere in the country; this is one of the few places in Zambia where you will see them). The park rangers advise visiting between 6–9am and 3–6pm for the best sightings. There is a particularly good picnic area — come prepared, spread out, and take the morning slowly before heading south to Livingstone.
Chaminuka Game Reserve
Named after Chaminuka, the legendary prophet and spirit medium whose influence extended across what is now Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, this private reserve in Lusaka’s Central Province is a full day well spent. The legend of Chaminuka is one of Southern Africa’s most compelling — he accurately prophesied the arrival of European colonisers, was executed by order of King Lobengula of Matabeland, and entered into oral tradition as an ancestor spirit still consulted by healers. His story is worth reading before you visit: it reframes the landscape you are driving through.
The reserve itself offers a cheetah walk (booked separately from the standard day pass), a boat game drive on a manmade lake, and a jeep safari that gets genuinely close to lions, elephants, and giraffes. The lunch buffet at the end of a full-day pass is included and substantial. Plan for the whole day. Distance from central Lusaka: approximately 19 miles (30 km), around 45 minutes.
Sunday Crafts Market & Kabwata Cultural Village
The Sunday Crafts Market sets up each week near the Arcades Mall — outdoor stalls, locally made jewellery, woodwork, textiles, and paintings. It is where you go if you want to buy something direct from the maker rather than from a hotel gift shop at a 400% markup. The crowd is genuinely local as well as tourist; the experience is more market than performance. Arrive with cash in Kwacha and some patience for the negotiation. The same stall owners appear during the week at Kabwata Cultural Village, an indoor market with over 72 craftsmanship stalls. More curated, more accessible on non-Sundays, slightly higher prices — still worth an hour.
Livingstone & Victoria Falls
The journey from Lusaka to Livingstone covers approximately 301 miles (484 km) — about six hours by road passing through Kafue, Mazabuka, Monze, and Choma — or 70 minutes by Proflight from Kenneth Kaunda International Airport. The drive is genuinely worthwhile if time allows: the road is good, the landscape changes dramatically, and you will stop at roadside vendors selling fresh fruit and hand-carved curios at prices that will not be replicated anywhere closer to the falls.
Livingstone is the most visited city in Zambia — named after the Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone, the first European to document Victoria Falls, which he named after Queen Victoria in 1855. The city, and the falls themselves, are dense with history and human story. Take time with both.
Victoria Falls (Mosi-oa-Tunya)
The falls were named Mosi-oa-Tunya — “The Smoke That Thunders” — by the Batonga people long before Livingstone arrived. That name is the more accurate description of the experience: on a full-flow day, the mist rises over 300 metres and can be seen from 25 miles (40 km) away. Victoria Falls is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the seven natural wonders of the world — at peak flow, it is the largest sheet of falling water on Earth by combined width and height.
The Zambian and Zimbabwean sides offer fundamentally different experiences. From Zimbabwe, you get the panoramic postcard view of the main curtain of water. From the Zambian side, you walk through the rainforest that the mist creates, crossing the Knife-Edge Bridge to get close enough to feel the spray. The Zambian side is better for swimming (Devil’s Pool, below), for the wildlife in the surrounding national park, and for the sense of being inside the falls rather than looking at them. The KAZA UniVisa means you can, and should, do both sides.
There are 13 viewpoints within the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park on the Zambian side. Wear waterproof clothing or accept that you will be soaked. This is not a warning — it is the point.
Devil’s Pool
At the edge of Victoria Falls on the Zambian side, a natural rock formation creates a pool where, during low-water season (approximately July to mid-January), you can swim right to the lip of the falls and look over the edge. The drop is over 100 metres. The experience is exactly as alarming and extraordinary as that sounds. The pool is accessible only via a licensed guide; do not attempt it independently. Tongabezi Lodge is one of the established operators. Book in advance, particularly for September and October when demand peaks. The access involves a short boat crossing and a moderate hike — allow half a day.
White-Water Rafting on the Zambezi
The Batoka Gorge below Victoria Falls contains some of the most technically demanding commercially rafted white water in the world — Grade 4 and 5 rapids named Stairway to Heaven, Commercial Suicide, and the Washing Machine. Safpar and Shearwater are the established operators, with full-day and half-day options. Water By Nature runs multi-day expeditions that include camping on Zambezi islands — if you have four or five days to spare, this is one of the finest river experiences in Africa. The gorge can be accessed from either the Zambian or Zimbabwean side.
The Gorge Swing
From the Victoria Falls Bridge — the 1905 steel arch that spans the gorge between Zambia and Zimbabwe — you jump into a 70-metre freefall before swinging out across the gorge in a 200-metre arc. This is not bungee jumping, though bungee jumping from the bridge is also available. The gorge swing is the experience that Will Smith did during his well-publicised Livingstone visit. Operators photograph and film every jump; the footage is available to purchase at the end. The harnesses are rigorously checked and the staff are professional in a way that very much matters here. Both the swing and the bungee can be booked from either side of the bridge. Note: you will need your passport to cross the bridge.
Microlight Flights Over the Falls
For approximately 30 minutes, you fly at low altitude over the falls in an open microlight aircraft — no canopy, no barrier between you and the mist and the light and the sheer drop. This is the view that photographers spend months trying to recreate from the ground. Most Livingstone lodges can arrange bookings through local operators. Best flown in the morning when light is warm and winds are calm.
The Livingstone Railway Museum
Livingstone’s most underrated attraction. The museum traces the history of the Cape-to-Cairo railway vision of Cecil John Rhodes — one of the most ambitious, and ultimately unrealised, infrastructure projects of the colonial era. The locomotive collection is extraordinary: steam engines dating back to the early 1900s, still intact, still carrying the physical weight of a particular chapter of history. The museum’s guide is exceptional — the kind of guide who turns a collection of old machines into a story about empire, engineering, community, and the remarkable contribution of Zambia’s Jewish settler community to the construction of Livingstone’s buildings and institutions. Almost no tourist ever comes here. That will change after you tell people about it.
Rhino Walking & Lion Encounter
Both experiences operate within Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park. The rhino walk is the more accessible of the two — approximately three hours including a short game drive and some time on foot near the white rhino enclosure, with a guide who is genuinely good at contextualising the conservation crisis that made this sanctuary necessary. Livingstone Safaris runs a well-regarded package. The lion walk is longer (around three hours) and involves walking alongside semi-habituated lions under close staff supervision. It is expensive — budget accordingly — but our travel companions who completed it were unanimous: it was worth every penny.
Royal Livingstone Express
A vintage steam train departs from the Zambia side of the Victoria Falls Bridge and travels along the Zambezi, stopping at a viewpoint for a formal dinner before returning. It takes approximately two hours in each direction and is as close to colonial-era railway travel as you will find anywhere in Southern Africa, minus the moral dimensions. The food is good, the drinks are generous, and the pace is the whole point. It is best booked as the final experience of a full day in Livingstone — by that point, you have earned the seat.
Livingstone Reptile Park
If Kalimba introduced you to Zambia’s reptiles in Lusaka, this is the deeper cut. The Livingstone Reptile Park holds albino crocodiles (yes, that is real), gaboon vipers, puff adders, black mambas, cobras, pythons, and a range of smaller species. Staff are knowledgeable. The park holds a TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence and the experience is consistently good regardless of when you visit. Entrance is relatively inexpensive and it does not require more than an hour and a half.
Kasanka National Park: The World’s Largest Mammal Migration
Every year between late October and December, approximately ten million straw-coloured fruit bats converge on a 10-hectare patch of evergreen swamp forest inside Kasanka National Park in central Zambia. The biomass of these bats exceeds that of the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti. It exceeds the sardine run off South Africa’s east coast. It is, by every scientific measure, the largest mammal migration on Earth — and fewer than a fraction of a percent of international wildlife travellers have seen it.
The bats — Eidolon helvum, the straw-coloured fruit bat — migrate from the Congo Basin and across central Africa, drawn by the fruiting of musuku trees (Uapaca sansibarica), waterberries, and red milkwood in Kasanka’s swamp forest. Research by the Kasanka Land Trust and the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology has shown that each bat flies an average of 30 miles (50 km) each night to feed, returning to roost in the forest before dawn. The ecological function of the migration is extraordinary: the bats are responsible for an estimated 60% of seed dispersal in central African forests. Without them, many of those forests would not regenerate.
At dusk, almost on a timer, the bats leave. The sky darkens before the sun goes down. For roughly 25 minutes, the air above the forest is a living, shifting mass — millions of silhouettes against a blood-red sky, tracked by crowned eagles and fish eagles hunting the slower individuals. Crocodiles wait in the water below. “If you have a colony like in Kasanka with several million bats, if each disperses one seed every night — that’s huge,” Dr. Dinka Dechmann of Germany’s Max Planck Institute has said of the ecological significance.
Viewing the migration: The park offers tree-top hides positioned around the bat forest — some managed by the park, some attached to the lodges. As of 2024, some of the older public hides have been retired; ground-level viewing areas remain accessible to all visitors without additional cost, and the access price to the elevated lodge hides is negotiable for self-drivers. One forum report from an overlander in early 2024 noted that the staff at SAWA Lodge (which functions as something close to park headquarters) initially quoted a guided-visit requirement, but this proved to be optional. The hides closest to the forest roost, accessible via Wasa Lodge, give the most intimate experience. Peak timing is a full moon in mid-to-late November — the contrast between the dark mass of bats and the lit sky is at its most dramatic.
Getting there: Kasanka is approximately 310 miles (500 km) north of Lusaka — around five to six hours by road on good tarmac and reasonable dirt tracks. A 4×4 is recommended. Charter flights can land at the airstrip inside the park. Wasa Lodge rates start at approximately USD $330 per person sharing on a fully inclusive basis. The park charges a daily entry fee of approximately USD $35 per person, plus a camping fee if applicable.
Combine with: Kasanka sits near both the Bangweulu Wetlands and Shiva Ngandu. A five-to-seven day northern circuit combining all three is one of the most rewarding and genuinely uncommon itineraries in Zambia — and one that almost no tourist operator actively packages.
Bangweulu Wetlands: The Shoebill & the Sky That Meets the Water
Bangweulu means “the place where the water meets the sky” in the local language. Stand at the edge of the wetlands at any time of year and you will understand immediately: the horizon is liquid, the light is extraordinary, and the sense of scale is disorientating in the way that only the largest African landscapes manage.
The Bangweulu Wetlands are not a national park — they are a community-managed conservation area, a distinction that matters. Approximately 50,000 people live within the wetlands boundary, retaining the right to fish and farm sustainably. African Parks has managed the area in partnership with local communities since 2008, and the results are visible: black lechwe populations (an endemic antelope found only in Bangweulu) have increased dramatically, and local fishermen now actively guard shoebill stork nesting sites as part of a formalised protection programme.
The star of Bangweulu is the shoebill stork (Balaeniceps rex) — a prehistoric-looking, grey, 1.2-metre tall bird with a bill shaped like a Dutch clog that it uses to hunt lungfish and frogs in the shallows. It is one of the most sought-after bird sightings in Africa, and Bangweulu is one of the most reliable places on Earth to find it. The main viewing season is May to August, when water levels have receded enough to access the birds by canoe. Local fishermen employed as nest guards can guide birders directly to reliable sighting areas.
Beyond the shoebill: over 400 bird species have been recorded, including 10% of the world’s wattled crane population. The endemic black lechwe assemble in herds of thousands on the floodplains between June and July. Sitatunga antelope (semi-aquatic, adapted to the swamp) are spotted regularly on canoe trips.
Getting there: Bangweulu is approximately 435 miles (700 km) north of Lusaka. The easiest access is by charter flight to one of two airstrips near the wetlands. Self-drive is possible for experienced overlanders with a fully equipped 4×4, but the tracks in the wet season (November–April) become impassable. Shoebill Island Camp is the primary accommodation — well-positioned, simply comfortable, and staffed by guides who know exactly where the shoebills are.
South Luangwa National Park: The Birthplace of the Walking Safari
Everything begins here. In 1950, a young British game ranger named Norman Carr approached Senior Chief Nsefu — Paramount Chief of the Kunda people in the Luangwa Valley — and persuaded him to set aside a portion of tribal land as a game reserve. He then built the first game-viewing camp open to the public in what was then Northern Rhodesia, and paid the revenue directly back to the Kunda community. At a time when “safari” meant hunting, Norman Carr introduced the idea of the photographic safari — walking into the bush with a camera instead of a rifle. In 1968, he formalised the walking safari as a guided tourist activity at Chibembe Safari Camp. That idea has since spread to every corner of the continent. The concept of conservation-based ecotourism — the model by which wildlife pays for its own survival — traces directly back to Norman Carr and to this valley.
Today, South Luangwa covers 3,490 square miles (9,050 sq km) of eastern Zambia, following the channel of the Luangwa River and bounded to the west by the Muchinga Escarpment. It is widely regarded as one of the finest game parks in Africa. What makes it different from the Serengeti or Kruger is not animal density alone (though the leopard population is among the highest on the continent) — it is the quality of guiding, the intimacy of the camps, and the particular experience of being on foot in the presence of wild animals.
Walking Safaris
A walking safari in South Luangwa is 3–4 hours on foot with a qualified guide (armed, with a rifle safety backup) and a scout. You move at the pace of the bush, not the pace of a vehicle. You read animal tracks in the sand — “see here, impala dung; leopards roll in it to disguise their scent when hunting.” You stand still while a lioness crosses the path fifty metres ahead. You learn to identify animals by silhouette, sound, and smell before you see them. It is an immersive, physiological experience that vehicle safaris simply cannot replicate. No other country has developed the walking safari tradition to the level that Zambia has, and no other valley within Zambia has the depth of experience that South Luangwa offers.
Night Drives
South Luangwa’s leopard population is so dense that night drives here are in a different category from anywhere else. With a spotlight from an open vehicle, guides locate leopards, civets, genets, porcupines, and the occasional serval — nocturnal animals that are functionally invisible on a daytime drive. Most quality camps include night drives in their rates. Book a camp that does.
Fly Camping & Sleepouts
Several camps in the Luwi River area — including those operated by Time + Tide, which continues Norman Carr’s original camps — offer sleepouts in the dry riverbed: a mozzie net, a campfire, a guide, and the sounds of lions and hyenas in the dark. You wake to the smell of coffee and elephants at the water. It is, by a considerable margin, the most frequently described transformative experience we have encountered in Zambia.
Wildlife
South Luangwa is known as the Valley of the Leopard for good reason. The park also holds elephant in large family groups, buffalo, lion, spotted hyena, wild dog, hippo, crocodile, and the endemic Thornicroft’s giraffe — a subspecies found nowhere else on Earth. Note: rhino were poached out of South Luangwa. North Luangwa, a significantly more remote park to the north, is where the black rhino reintroduction programme is centred.
Getting there: Fly into Mfuwe Airport (MFU) with Proflight from Lusaka in approximately 75 minutes. By road from Lusaka: approximately 472 miles (760 km), 10+ hours. The drive from Livingstone to South Luangwa is approximately 698 miles (1,124 km) — overnight at Kalomo or Choma is advisable to break the journey.
When to visit: May to October for walking safaris and game drives. The emerald (wet) season of December to March offers a different beauty — lush green landscapes, boat safaris on the flooded river, and far fewer visitors — but most walking camps close.
Liuwa Plain National Park: Africa’s Forgotten Migration
Every year, between late October and mid-December, 40,000–50,000 blue wildebeest move south across the flat honey-coloured grasslands of Liuwa Plain, following the rains and the new grass. This is Africa’s second-largest wildebeest migration — larger than anything that happens in Botswana or Zimbabwe, rivalling the Serengeti in the instinctive drama of the movement. Unlike the Serengeti, you may watch it from a vehicle with no other tourists in sight.
Liuwa Plain sits in the remote western corner of Zambia on the upper Zambezi floodplains, close to the Angolan border. Its name means simply “plain” in Lozi. The park has an unusual legal status: in the 1880s, the Litunga (king) of Barotseland — the Lozi kingdom — declared the area a protected game reserve and appointed his people as its custodians. That relationship between the Lozi people and the land remains legally embedded; approximately 12,000 people continue to live within the park boundaries today, and the Litunga’s role in its conservation is still acknowledged.
Beyond wildebeest: the park holds cheetah, hyena (in packs of up to 50), wild dog, tsessebe, eland, zebra, and red lechwe. Lions were poached out in the early 2000s and have been successfully reintroduced. The story of Lady Liuwa — the last surviving lioness from the original pride, who lived alone in the park for years before the reintroduction — has become part of Liuwa’s mythology. A 2011 documentary by National Geographic chronicled her story and accelerated interest in the park’s conservation programme. Local folklore holds that she is the reincarnation of an elderly Lozi woman named Mambeti, which is the reason she spent so much of her time in the woodlands where Mambeti lived out her final years.
Birdwatching at Liuwa is exceptional — over 334 species, including wattled cranes (an endangered species), crowned cranes in flocks that cloud the sky, pelicans, and, for the patient birder, slaty egrets.
Getting there: Fly into Kalabo with Proflight from Lusaka (approximately 2.5 hours). The only lodge inside the park is King Lewanika Lodge, operated by Norman Carr Safaris — six villas, maximum 15 guests. Self-drive is possible in the dry season with a 4×4 but the tracks are demanding and the remoteness is absolute. The park is closed December to March.
Lower Zambezi National Park
The Lower Zambezi sits along Zambia’s southern border with Zimbabwe, adjacent to Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools — together they form one of the largest protected areas in the Zambezi Valley. The river here is broad, elephant-dense, and alive with hippos. The lodges are some of the most scenically positioned in the country, sitting directly on the bank with uninterrupted views across to Zimbabwe.
The signature activity here is the canoe safari — paddling the Zambezi in a Canadian canoe with a guide, past elephants drinking at the bank, hippos watching you sceptically from the water, and crocodiles that have learned to interpret canoes as irrelevant. The islands scattered across the river provide landing spots for breaks and wildlife observation. This is a long-form, slow-paced experience that rewards patience and pays back in moments of extraordinary proximity to animals. Multi-day canoe expeditions are available for those willing to camp on the islands overnight.
Other activities: game drives (four of the Big Five are present — lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo; black rhino are not found here), boat safaris, fishing (tiger fish, one of the most prized freshwater game fish in Africa), and night drives. The park is at its best in the dry season (May–October) when game concentrates along the riverfront.
Getting there: Proflight flies directly to Jeki Airstrip and Royal Airstrip inside the Lower Zambezi National Park from Lusaka (approximately 45 minutes). By road from Lusaka: approximately 93 miles (150 km) to Chirundu, plus a river crossing — allow three hours minimum and arrange the crossing in advance with your lodge.
Kafue National Park
Kafue is the largest national park in Zambia and one of the largest in the world — at approximately 8,650 square miles (22,400 sq km), it is roughly the size of Wales. It is also one of the least visited. That gap between scale and visitor numbers is its defining quality: you can drive for hours through intact wilderness without another vehicle in sight, and the animals are calm in consequence.
The park contains two endemic species that serious wildlife travellers come specifically to see: the Kafue lechwe, a semi-aquatic antelope adapted to the flooded grasslands of the Busanga Plains, and the puku, a mid-sized antelope common throughout but seen in particularly large numbers here. Wild dog, roan antelope, sable (a magnificent antelope that looks like it was designed to intimidate everything around it), and lion are all regularly encountered.
The Busanga Plains in the north of the park are considered the finest game-viewing area, particularly in the dry season when lechwe herds move onto the open floodplains and predators follow. Kafue also has several photographic hides positioned at waterholes — patient, quiet, and often extraordinarily productive for wildlife photography.
Note: a concession area within Kafue permits licensed hunting for population management purposes. This is a contentious arrangement that Zambia’s national parks authority defends on ecological grounds. Form your own view; but it does not detract from the quality of the photographic safari in the wider park.
Getting there: The main gate is approximately 186 miles (300 km) west of Lusaka, around three hours by road. Proflight operates seasonal flights to a Kafue airstrip. Accommodation ranges from rustic camping to quality tented camps; allow a minimum of two days, preferably three or four.
Shiva Ngandu & Kapishya Hot Springs
This is the one that surprises people most. In the remote north of Zambia, approximately 497 miles (800 km) from Lusaka, is a working English manor house. Not a ruin, not a museum set piece — a functioning estate built in 1932 by retired British officer Sir Stewart Gore-Browne on 10,000 acres of land he purchased for two shillings. The estate includes workers’ cottages, a school, a hospital, a post office, and an airstrip — Gore-Browne’s vision was self-sufficiency, a community in itself.
The name comes from local Bena Ngandu history: ngandu means crocodile, and the people who settled near this lake came from Congo, having found a dead crocodile — good omen, in their tradition. Ishiba Ngandu means “the lake of the royal crocodile.” Gore-Browne named his estate after the lake.
The house has been kept by Gore-Browne’s descendants and is open to visitors and overnight guests. Walking through it is like reading a private archive of 20th-century Central African history: books, photographs, furniture brought from England, and the quiet evidence of a life lived in a place that most of his contemporaries considered impossibly remote. Gore-Browne received significant visitors here throughout the 1940s–60s, including figures from Zambia’s independence movement. The Harvey family, who manage the estate today, are generous hosts and exceptional storytellers.
A 20-minute drive from Shiva Ngandu brings you to Kapishya Hot Springs — a natural hot spring with a pool deep enough to submerge properly in, surrounded by forest, with a campsite on the bank of a clear-water stream. After any extended drive through Zambia’s north, these hot springs are the correct answer to the question “what do we do this evening?” The campsite is quiet, well-managed, and one of the most peaceful overnight stops in the country.
Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage
Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage was founded in 1983 and now houses over 120 chimpanzees — one of the largest chimpanzee sanctuaries in the world. The orphanage accepts chimpanzees that have been confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade or rescued from laboratories and circuses. It is not a zoo: the chimps live in large, forested enclosures managed as close to natural conditions as funding allows. The organisation runs entirely on donations and visitor entry fees.
Watching chimpanzees for any extended period is a genuinely affecting experience — the social intelligence, the conflicts, the grooming rituals, the capacity for apparent joy and apparent grief. It is one of those wildlife encounters that changes something about how you think about the human-animal boundary. Chimfunshi also offers overnight accommodation for those who want more than a day visit.
Kariba Dam & Lake Kariba
Lake Kariba, created by the damming of the Zambezi in 1958, is the largest manmade reservoir in the world by volume — approximately 181 miles (291 km) long and 25 miles (40 km) wide. From the Zambian side, you cannot see the far shore. The dam wall itself, which straddles the border at Siavonga, can be walked for approximately 250–310 metres (820–1,020 feet) into Zimbabwe before the security checkpoint. Your passport stays at the Zambian security post while you walk; a somewhat bemusing arrangement that works precisely as described.
The lake itself — beyond the dam — is worth time if your itinerary allows. Wildlife safaris by houseboat are available on the Zambian shore; game drives access the elephant and buffalo populations of Matusadona National Park on the Zimbabwean side. Kapenta fishing (the small sardine-like fish that is a staple across southern Zambia) happens here at night, with boats carrying brilliant lights to attract the fish to the surface.
Zambia Travel Checklist
- Valid passport (minimum 6 months’ validity beyond departure date)
- KAZA UniVisa or Zambia tourist visa (apply in advance at evisa.gov.zm)
- Yellow fever vaccination certificate (if arriving from a risk country)
- Malaria prophylaxis (consult your doctor at least 6 weeks before travel)
- Travel insurance with emergency medical evacuation cover
- International driving licence (if self-driving)
- Proflight internal flight bookings (book well ahead in peak season)
- High-SPF sun cream — the Zambian sun is not polite
- Quality insect repellent (DEET-based)
- Neutral-toned clothing for safaris (khaki, green, beige — not white or bright colours)
- Waterproof layer for Victoria Falls (you will get completely wet)
- Hiking boots for walking safaris and Devil’s Pool access
- Headtorch
- Power bank
- Unlocked mobile phone for a local Zamtel or MTN SIM card
- USD cash in small denominations for tips, entry fees, and craft markets
- Kwacha for local purchases, fuel, and markets
- Camera with a fast lens — dawn and dusk light is extraordinary and brief
- Any personal medication in sufficient supply (pharmacies outside Lusaka are limited)
- Printed copies of bookings and travel insurance (lodge Wi-Fi is often slow or absent)
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Since we are already in Lusaka, let us start by exploring the city.
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