Zambia Travel Guide

The real Africa.

I've been living and working in Zambia for 4 years now. Mainly in the Luangwa Valley, but also in Liuwa Plain National Park.
South Luangwa is one of the premier parks in Southern Africa, with abundant and diverse wildlife and a true remote feeling. North Luangwa is even remoter, about as remote as you can get in Africa those days.
In South Luangwa lions are commonly seen, and the nightdrives offer a good chance of seeing the nocturnal animals, including the ever elusive leopard, which is often seen.
Wild dogs are also regularly seen and the Luangwa Valley host (near) endemice subspecies of Thornicroft's Giraffe, Crawshay's Zebra and Cookson's Wildebeest.
With over 400 bird species recorded the Luangwa Valley is a birders dream. Specialties are the southern carmine bee-eater colonies from late August to November. Pel's fishing owl is also regularly seen, as are numerous other raptors.
South Luangwa is the home of walking safaris, originally started by Norman Carr. While you might not see the likes of lions and elephants as well as from a vehicle, walking between those animals is a truly exhilirating experience!


Liuwa Plain National Park (I visited in October-November 2010) is a park for the advanced Africa traveller. Very remote and offering wide views or a vast, flat plain. It hosts the second biggest wildebeest migration (after the Serengeti-Masaai Mara migration) of about 40,000 wildebeest (the number is growing). Wild dogs and cheetah are home on and around the plain, where hyaenas are numerous. The lion population, which was down to 1 female (lady Liuwa) is slowly being restored and 2 males (in 2009) and 2 subadult females (in 2011) have been reintroduced.
The plains are a birders dreams, with tens of thousand migratory birds (like Caspian Plover, Pratincoles). Pelicans, grey crowned cranes, wattled cranes, fuellerborn's longclaws are numerous. Liuwa Plain NP is a truly unique experience.

Lower Zambezi National Park (August 2008, 2009) is an exclusive park. The actual safari area is quite small, but the game is plentiful and the (luxury) camps don't just offer game drives and walks, but also boating and fishing (releasing of the catch).

Rugged and Remote!

Travel in Zambia is a quintessential African experience. People are poor, friendly and hard working. Bicycles laden with firewood or produce or water jugs or families or pigs fill the roads. Chaos and confusion reign at border crossings. The scenery is sublime, and the National Parks are remote. It requires an impressive amount of travel endurance just to make the drive into parks such as South Luangwa and Kafue. But go there. Do not miss Zambia!

See the great Victoria falls and walk with rhinos

Zambia has a combination of adventure sports, beautiful scenery (not to belittle the great Victoria Falls as mere "scenery") and excellent walking safaris. A return trip is highly recommended, as Victoria Falls completely changes but is just as dramatic in the dry season as in the rainy season.

Unlike any place on Earth

We stayed at Sussi and Chuma on the Zambezi River. We didn't care about visiting the falls, but we did go boating on the river each day, late in the afternoon, early evening. We went to see animals in the reserve earlier in the day on land with a guide.

While the animals in the reserve were amazing, the scenes on the river were unimaginable. We saw massive crocodiles and hippos everywhere. We saw animals on the banks of Zimbabwe although we did not visit Zimbabwe. Only after we returned home did we realize how dangerous our adventures had been.

A hippo had been hit on the road that ran through the reserve one night. The locals used it to feed the poor. While on the river one evening, we saw the carcass lowered down to the crocs on the banks. It was something you could never imagine seeing and put life in America into sharp perspective.

This is only bit of Zambia I've seen as we drove from and back to Malawi but it was great.

Because I enjoyed it very much I give it an excellent grade. It was also much better than other surrounding parks (Malawi ones), but those were all also much smaller.

Zambia still has natural beauty. Hopefully it will continue to be conserved. It has flights from major cities to the safari destinations with a short drive to the safaris. It is safe.

Zambia is a beautiful country with extremely friendly people and great wildlife. Aside from the area around Victoria falls there are comparatively few visitors to the country and so one can experience amazing landscapes and abundant wildlife without the crowds often found in Parks in other countries.

Less spoiled by too many tourists than other safari destinations.

So many great places to be discovered, remote, beuatiful, huge rivers, great people.