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Coverage / Eswatini

Eswatini

Southern Africa

A small, mountainous monarchy landlocked between South Africa and Mozambique, one of Africa's last absolute kingdoms, with a living Swazi ceremonial calendar. Big-game reserves, high-veld hiking country, a recycled-glass craft tradition, the MTN Bushfire arts festival and the royal Umhlanga Reed Dance sit within an easy drive of each other.

5 activities · 5 pairings · 7 verified providers

What you can do in Eswatini

Craft Skills (Bladesmithing, Pottery, Glass)

Ngwenyayear-roundNgwenya is where you watch one of Africa's best-known crafts being made from rubbish. At the Ngwenya Glass studio, a team of Swazi glass-blowers turns discarded soft-drink bottles into mouth-blown tumblers, vases and the animal figurines the workshop is famous for, all from 100 percent recycled glass. From a raised walkway you look straight down onto the furnaces as the blowers gather glowing glass on the end of long irons, shape it, and lift finished pieces off with a practised swing. It is a real working factory, not a demonstration set up for tourists, and the craft has been running here since the late 1970s. The complex around it holds jewellery, basketry and candle makers, a cafe and a gallery, so a visit doubles as a place to buy directly from the makers. Ngwenya sits right at the border, so it works as a first or last stop on a trip between Johannesburg and the Ezulwini Valley.

Music & Culture Festivals

MTN BushfireMalkernsMayMTN Bushfire is southern Africa's flagship Pan-African arts festival, and for one weekend at the end of May it turns a farm in the Malkerns Valley into a gathering of the whole continent. The setting is the reason to come: House on Fire is an open-air amphitheatre covered in hand-laid mosaic and salvaged sculpture, and the stages spread out under the trees on the surrounding farmland. The programme is deliberately broad, mixing African and international headline music with theatre, spoken word, poetry, film, dance and a global-village market, all wrapped in the festival's Bring Your Fire ethic of art with a social conscience. More than 20,000 people come, tickets have sold out year after year, and the crowd is a mix of Swazis, South Africans and travellers who plan a whole trip around it. Because Eswatini is small, you can pair the festival with a game drive or a hike in the same few days. It is the single best reason to be in the kingdom in May.

Trekking / Hiking

Malolotja Nature ReserveApr May Jun Jul Aug SepMalolotja is the best walking country in Eswatini and one of the finest stretches of montane wilderness in southern Africa. This is high-veld at its wildest: rolling grassland cut by the Komati and Nkomati gorges, quartzite ridges that are among the oldest rock on earth, and the kingdom's tallest waterfall dropping through the Malolotja gorge. The reserve is unfenced, so you share the trails with zebra, blesbok, wildebeest and the odd leopard, and it holds over 280 bird species including breeding blue swallow and bald ibis. You can day-walk to the falls or take a two-, three- or four-night slackpacking trail sleeping in wilderness camps, carrying only a daypack while your kit moves ahead. For a shorter thrill there is the Malolotja canopy tour, a series of ziplines and a suspension bridge above the Majolomba river. It is quiet, cheap and remote, a rarity this close to a capital city.

Wildlife Safaris

Hlane Royal National ParkMay Jun Jul Aug SepHlane is where you go for a Big Game safari inside Eswatini rather than crossing into South Africa for one. It is the kingdom's biggest reserve and its only lion ground, and because it began as a royal hunting reserve the wildlife here carries a direct line to the Swazi crown. On a game drive you have a real chance at the low-veld's signature animals: elephant browsing the knobthorn, white rhino grazing the open pans, and lion and leopard in the fenced Big Cats section. Hlane is also one of the best raptor sites in the region, with a large breeding colony of white-backed vultures and nesting marabou storks over the camp. The scale is human and the crowds are thin, so a morning drive feels like the park is yours. You can also walk with an armed guide or cycle the rhino trails, which is rare on an African safari and a large part of why people make the detour. It pairs naturally with the cultural sites of the Ezulwini Valley an hour to the west.

Witness / Attend

Umhlanga Reed DanceLudzidziniAug SepThe Umhlanga Reed Dance is one of the largest and most striking traditional ceremonies left in Africa, and it happens in the open at the royal village of Ludzidzini every August. Over eight days, tens of thousands of unmarried Swazi girls travel from every corner of the kingdom, cut tall reeds from the riverbanks, and carry them to the Queen Mother's residence to rebuild the windbreak around her home. The ceremony builds to a main day when as many as 40,000 young women, in beaded skirts, sashes and bright regalia, dance and sing in long columns before the King and the royal family. It is a genuine living rite, not a show staged for visitors, and outsiders are welcome to watch from the public stands as guests of the nation. Seeing it is the clearest window there is onto Swazi identity, the monarchy and the role of the Queen Mother. Because the dates follow the royal calendar and are set by the palace, plan for late August and confirm close to the time.

Best months at a glance

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Craft Skills
Music Festivals
Trekking
Wildlife Safaris
Witness / Attend

Upcoming events in Eswatini