Coverage / Zambia
Zambia
Southern Africa
Southern African nation bordering Zimbabwe, home to Livingstone and the Zambian side of Victoria Falls. A base for Zambezi Gorge whitewater and access to some of Africa's finest national parks.
6 activities · 9 pairings · 12 verified providers
What you can do in Zambia
Wildlife Safaris
- Kafue National ParkJul Aug Sep OctKafue is Zambia's oldest and largest park, more than 22,000 square kilometres of miombo woodland, rivers and floodplain that see a fraction of the visitors of the country's smaller reserves. Its star is the Busanga Plains in the far north, a seasonal wetland that draws big lion prides famous for climbing trees, cheetah hunting across the open grass, and thousands of red lechwe and puku, with wattled crane and other waterbirds in the shallows. To the south the Kafue River and its tributaries hold elephant, buffalo, leopard, sable and roan antelope and hippo, viewed on game drives, guided walks and boat cruises. The sheer size and low traffic make Kafue feel like a genuine wilderness, and it works well combined with the Busanga fly-camps in the dry-season peak.
- Kasanka National ParkNov DecKasanka is one of the few parks in the world named for a single wildlife spectacle. From late October to December, more than ten million straw-coloured fruit bats pour into a patch of swamp forest barely the size of a few football fields, the largest mammal migration on the planet by sheer number. At dusk the sky fills as the colony lifts off to feed, and at dawn they stream back in a river of wings watched from raised platforms among the trees, with raptors picking off stragglers. Beyond the bats, this small park protects rare sitatunga antelope that wade the papyrus swamps, best seen from the Fibwe hide, along with puku, elephant and good birding on the Kasanka and Luwombwa rivers. It is a specialist trip built around the migration rather than a big-five safari, and utterly distinctive.
- South Luangwa National ParkMay Jun Jul Aug Sep OctSouth Luangwa is the birthplace of the walking safari, the format the conservationist Norman Carr pioneered here in the 1950s, and it remains one of Africa's finest big-cat and wilderness parks. The Luangwa River and its oxbow lagoons concentrate extraordinary game: one of the continent's highest leopard densities, large elephant and buffalo herds, endemic Thornicroft's giraffe and Cookson's wildebeest, packs of endangered African wild dog, and hippo pods hundreds strong. You explore it the way it was first opened up, on foot behind an armed licensed guide reading tracks and small signs, as well as on day and night drives that turn up leopard, civet and genet after dark. The valley holds more than 400 bird species, and the dry-season concentrations from June onward are among the most reliable game viewing on the continent.
Witness / Attend
- N'cwalaChipataFebN'cwala is the first-fruits ceremony of the Ngoni people of eastern Zambia, a loud, physical celebration of the harvest and of a warrior history that traces back to the great Ngoni migration north from Zulu country in the nineteenth century. Held each February at Mutenguleni village outside Chipata, it gathers Ngoni from across the region to bring the first produce of the season to their paramount chief, who tastes it on behalf of the nation before anyone else may eat. The heart of the day is the ingoma, the war dance, as bare-chested warriors in animal skins, carrying shields, spears and cow-tail whisks, stamp and chant in tight ranks while cattle are led through the arena and, by tradition, a beast is slaughtered and its blood offered to the chief. Revived in 1980 after decades in abeyance, it is one of Zambia's most powerful ceremonies to witness, a community performing its own history rather than a show put on for visitors.
- KuombokaMonguMar AprKuomboka is one of Africa's great surviving royal ceremonies, staged by the Lozi people of western Zambia when the rising Zambezi floods the Barotse Plain. On a single day near the end of the rains, the Litunga, the Lozi king, is moved from his palace at Lealui out on the plain to higher ground at Limulunga, carried on the Nalikwanda, a huge barge painted in black and white stripes and topped with a carved elephant, driven by scores of paddlers in animal-skin dress and scarlet caps. A second barge carries the queen, and the royal drums and Lozi songs sound across the water as thousands line the banks and follow in boats. Part-way across, the king changes into the full dress uniform of a British admiral, a legacy of the colonial treaties that recognised the Barotse kingdom. There is no ticket office and no organiser you can book; you come and witness it, and the reward is a ceremony that has run for centuries and still marks the rhythm of the flood.
Best months at a glance
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