South Luangwa National Park

Savannas & PlainsEastern,Zambia

A Zambian rift valley run by one wandering river, its oxbow lagoons holding leopards at some of the highest densities in southern Africa.

September·Peaking now

Sep–Oct

The crescendo: the river shrinks to sandbars and leopards, lion prides and elephants pack onto the last lagoons, while thousands of carmine bee-eaters burrow the clay banks scarlet. Days climb into the high 30s°C before the first storms.

Year-round Leopards at some of Africa's highest densities, big prides, elephants and hippo-packed river bends hold the valley every month, with the endemic Thornicroft's giraffe; the water is what changes: the flood, birds and camps.

South Luangwa is a stretch of rift valley in Zambia run by a single wandering river. The Luangwa keeps changing its course, and the bends it abandons stay behind as oxbow lagoons, which is where the animals collect. As the dry season shrinks the river, hippo pods pile onto the sandbars and into whatever water is left, dozens of them wedged into one bend, grunting and shoving, with crocodiles hauled out a few metres away. The high cut banks above make a natural grandstand for it. The valley also holds one of the densest leopard populations in Africa, and night drives are still legal here, so a red-filtered spotlight is the best chance you get anywhere of watching one move through the trees. By day the lion prides have grown up around open cars and pay them no attention at all, which is how you end up a few metres from lions at rest. The walking safari was invented in this valley. An armed scout leads, a guide reads the ground, and you follow in single file, the way Norman Carr first took guests out in the 1950s — you cover very little distance and notice everything, tracks, dung, a leopard's kill hoisted into a sausage tree. Carr had form with this place. Before any of the walking began he hand-reared two orphaned lion cubs, taught them to hunt and released them back into the bush at about three years old. The giraffes browsing the same woodland are Thornicroft's, which live in this valley and nowhere else, and not one of them is in a zoo anywhere. From September thousands of southern carmine bee-eaters tunnel nest holes into the exposed clay banks of the river and stream past the hides below in a scarlet blur. What the animals have never accepted is a change of route. Each year a family of elephants files through the reception of a lodge near Mfuwe, because the building went up in 1998 straight across a path the herd had always walked.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Walk in the first hour of light — the morning walk leaves camp at sunrise, in groups of six or so, while the sand still holds every track the night wrote on it.
Let the river do the work — park above a cut bank and wait, rather than chasing sightings; everything in the valley comes down to the water eventually.
Mfuwe is the way in — the airstrip and the park's main gate sit here, and camps deeper in the park can be cut off entirely once the rains soften the tracks.
Hippos, not cats, are the danger in camp — they graze the banks after dark, so never put yourself between one and the water, and take the escort offered to your tent.

Things to do

1
Track leopards by spotlight after dark
South Luangwa holds one of Africa's densest leopard populations, and night drives with a red-filtered spotlight are the best chance of watching one hunt or move through the trees. By day the prides here have grown up around open cars and pay them no attention, so you end up a few metres from lions at rest. The same drives turn up Thornicroft's giraffe, the valley's own subspecies, gathering at waterholes in the low light of early morning and late afternoon.
2
Look down on the hippo pods from a cut bank
As the dry season shrinks the Luangwa, pods pile onto the sandbars and into what water is left — dozens of animals wedged into a single bend, grunting and shoving. The high banks make a natural grandstand, with crocodiles hauled out a few metres away.
3
Walk the valley that invented the walking safari
An armed scout leads, a guide reads the ground, and you follow in single file — the way Norman Carr first took guests out in the 1950s. You cover little distance and notice everything: tracks, dung, a leopard's kill hoisted into a sausage tree.
4
Sit under the carmine bee-eater colony
From September, thousands of southern carmine bee-eaters tunnel nest holes into the exposed clay banks of the river. Photographic hides are set at the water's edge below the colony, where the birds stream past in a scarlet blur to feed their young.

Watch

Nearby

303 km