From my bed in my nest, all I can hear are birds. In the branches above, the sweet melody of a Heuglin’s robin reverberates in the dawn air. From nearby bushes, twittering and tweeting sounds ring out like little bells. Egyptian geese below squawk, and in the distance a bulbul sings to a prospective mate.
As alarms go, a chorus of Zambian birdsong is pretty magical to wake up to. When you’re tucked up in a nest, it feels even more so — particularly when it’s followed by the sound of “knock knock” from a room attendant, who down below attaches a basket to a rope and hoists up a Thermos of tea and a jar of cookies.
In the Kafue National Park, on a freezing winter’s morning in July, there are few cosier places to watch the sun coming up than beneath a feather duvet in a treetop room. Designed by the Dutch founder of Green Safaris, Vincent Kouwenhoven, the four rooms of the camp at Chisa Busanga were inspired by bird’s nests (chisa in the local Nyanja language), woven from branches by villagers known for their basketry and dotted about an island of trees. Each one looks like a cross between a futuristic spaceship and the giant home of a hamerkop — although no wading bird would have a staircase, a hot shower, brass basin or WC.
In a wilderness like the Kafue, the wood-clad treehouse-style rooms and the camp’s gentle footprint seem particularly apt. Zambia’s oldest national park, created in 1950, is the world’s second biggest wildlife sanctuary. It’s also one of the least visited, thanks to floods that for much of the year submerge swathes of grassland. When I fly over it from Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, in a four-seater Cessna, it’s clear why the explorer David Livingstone was conquered by the great wet wilderness. Every now and then, there’s a village or a web of trails created by hippos in their hunt for pasture, but mostly there’s water: mile upon mile of swamp, gold in the midday sun, until we bump down onto Busanga Plains in the north and are surrounded by another sea: of golden grass.
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Zambia may be under the radar by comparison with safari destinations such as South Africa and Kenya, but its commitment to wildlife is impressive. One third of it is devoted to game reserves, some of them the size of Switzerland. What it has long been known for is its mid-range and budget hotel scene. Now resorts with serious swank factor are popping up.
Of those, Green Safaris is the latest to try to bring people closer to nature in the least invasive way possible. The footprint of Chisa Busanga, a new camp opened during lockdown, is minimal. A bank of solar panels, shown to me by the genial Zambian general manager Chipasha Mwamba, generates all the power — “I can’t decide whether we’re brave or bonkers not to have a generator,” she says with a grin. Water pumped from a borehole is purified on site. Veg for delicious home-style food is grown by a local community.
Even the Land Cruisers are electric, which makes going out — twice a day, across the great Busanga Plains — even more extraordinary. Rather than listening to a belching diesel engine, my ears are attuned to the cries of birdlife (more than 495 species, including great flocks of beautiful wattled and crowned cranes). I hear jackals whoop, and the warm panting of a nearby lion forming misty clouds above his muzzle as he pads determinedly across the misty morning plains. I witness huge herds of water-loving lechwe scattering into floodplains, panicked, as a giant crocodile glides ominously by. I’m as close to nature as it’s possible to be by day — and as comfortable as a chick in a well-feathered nest by night.
At my next stop, the South Luangwa National Park, an hour’s flight northeast of Lusaka, I’m not just close to the game, I’m right in its midst. Wildlife in Zambia is as abundant as that of neighbouring countries — Botswana, Zimbabwe — and Green Safaris’ newest camp, Shawa Luangwa, is in one of its most game-rich areas, on the southern banks of the Luangwa River. Within beautiful gnarled thickets of African ebony, wildlife wanders freely, with little concern for the handful of homo sapiens who since 2021 have made this patch their home.
Wigwam-shaped tents — just five — are set upon raised wooden platforms either side of a thatched open-sided living-dining area, so there’s very little to disturb animals. While I’m there, elephants crash about in the trees, stripping bark and ripping down leaves. At night bushbabies shriek shrilly. Hyenas skulk about and lethal-tusked hippos haul their hefty bodies through the undergrowth.
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The camp itself is contemporary and comfortable, with a wide swimming pool and living area for midday lounging, an outdoor shower as well as a comfy sofa on the big deck of each tent, and a sunken bath inside each tent for moonlight mossie-free bathing. Yet it’s the proximity to the game that gives the place its edge: with popular local guide Jacob Shawa heading up the guiding, I enjoy full immersion, on foot and in electric vehicles.
The South Luangwa is known as the Valley of the Leopard. There is a 90 per cent chance, Shawa tells me, of seeing Africa’s most beautiful cat. And we do — on my first evening — happening upon one lying with a cub on the branch of a tree, ripping off the leg of an impala and dropping titbits to scavenging hyenas that snarl and whoop with delight. Sadly we are not alone. Around us are ten other vehicles, bristling with long camera lenses. Having seen the glorious spotted beasts, we speed off, agreeing to stick to less populated safari areas and to enjoy what Jacob has specialised in for almost a quarter of a century: walking safaris.
The beauty of Shawa’s site is not only that it’s in a game-rich area, but that it has its own pontoon on which to cross the river, so you don’t have to go through the (busy) main gate. Accompanied by an armed scout, after a 20-minute riverside walk we float across the river and are among giraffes, gently ambling through acacias alongside fat little zebras that are snorting and skittish as we approach beneath whirls of vultures and marabou storks. We watch a fish eagle swoop on a catch from the riverbank and a darting kingfisher miss one; we see a giant monitor lizard slink into a hole and warthogs hotfoot it out of one. To the scout’s delight, we even spot a three-metre golden-skinned python gliding into a bush: only the third the wildlife lover has ever seen.
I get another lesson in just how complicated protecting wildlife is when I stop off in the little town of Mfuwe, en route to my next camp. Passing Mfuwe Lodge, which is backed by a foundation started by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, I discover how involved he was in trying to protect wildlife here, alongside a posse of devoted conservationists. The inspirational Rachel McRobb, CEO of Conservation South Luangwa, tells me of the tens of thousands of pounds funnelled through British organisations such as Tusk, as well as donations from camps to help fund rangers and anti-poaching activities. I buy crafts at Project Luangwa, which provides education and jobs for women, as well as cool linens from Tribal Textiles, which employs 80 villagers. An hour here and it becomes evident that tourism isn’t just a bonus for the economy — it is a prime driver of people’s lives.
Changing human destinies while protecting the landscape and wildlife was precisely why the charismatic Davy family — Paul, Lynne and their children Darryl, Michael and Jordan — took on 60,000 acres in the remote southwestern stretches of the park in 2019, to create the brand-new Sungani Lodge. When Wilderness Safaris gave it up in the 1990s, it was left to go wild, and open to poachers. “But it was one of the most magical sites we’d ever seen,” Michael tells me, during our three-hour drive from Mfuwe to his new bush home. “If we protected it, we knew we could make a difference. In our first season we saw virtually no game. Now it’s all coming back.”
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At Sungani, from my enormous luxury tent, with its outdoor shower and plunge pool, the scene is one of the prettiest I’ve seen in the park. Below my deck, hippos wallow in a lake-sized lagoon covered in water lilies. In the shaded thickets of ebony groves behind, monkeys play and pukus graze. We spot giraffes on a game drive and follow elephants casually strolling down a road towards giant sunbathing crocodiles — one of them, our tracker tells me, pulled his closest friend from a dugout to his death when the pair were fishing.
With the nearest neighbour an hour’s drive away, the area is certainly wild, so the Davy family have ensured that Sungani is not just comfortable but self-sufficient, with solar power and a borehole, good wi-fi and a veg patch, as well as an elegant living room with lovely leather sofas and a convivial bar, a big swimming pool and a fire pit for starlit drinks.
Every bit of it was built by 70 local villagers, trained on site to be bricklayers and thatchers, carpenters and welders. They even added a little exercise centre in the bush, and given the non-stop delights delivered by the talented chef Quinton Spocter during my stay — from perfect gazpacho to waist-ruining cakes — I persuaded myself I needed to visit. Until, that is, a hippo ambled onto the pathway en route, giving me my favourite excuse yet not to go to the gym.
Lisa Grainger was a guest of the Explorations Company, which has eight nights’ all-inclusive from £9,998pp, including two nights each at Chisa Busanga, Shawa Luangwa, Sungani and Chiawa, and road and light-aircraft transfers (explorationscompany.com). Fly to Lusaka
Three more wild Zambian camps
1. Kakuli Bush Camp, South Luangwa National Park
This simple, five-room bush camp is seriously low-impact, in a quiet, game-rich area alongside the Luangwa River. Rooms are crafted from reeds and thatch, power is solar-generated and open-fronted rooms are cooled by river breezes and fans. Operated by Time + Tide, it’s one of four bush camps created by the park’s founder, Norman Carr, that form the backbone of a beautiful walking trail. The rooms and little living area are comfortable and contemporary, but the real stars are the grasslands, miombo forests and reeded riverbanks, where you might meet a lion or spot packs of wild dog.
Details All-inclusive doubles from £1,209 (timeandtideafrica.com)
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2. Chiawa Camp, Lower Zambezi National Park
This is the first — and to many the best — camp on the Zambezi River, thanks to the efforts over more than 30 years of its owners, the Cumings family. Eight recently refurbished safari-style thatched rooms, and a new family house, now have outdoor plunge-baths and showers, and spacious verandas from which to game-watch. The camp’s host, Juliet Musesa Zulu, is renowned for her warmth, and ensures meals are varied and delicious. Most importantly, the guides are real pros, whether that’s taking bush walks, evening drives or canoe excursions along channels in which elephants regularly swim.
Details All-inclusive doubles from £1,532 (chiawa.com)
3. Old Mondoro, Lower Zambezi National Park
This charming little five-bedroom bush camp, in a shaded stretch beside the Zambezi, is so popular that it’s often tricky to get in. Its appeal? Its intimacy, its romantic, rustic bush style (with open-fronted reed-and-thatch rooms and outdoor showers and baths), its delicious food and its guides who, like those at its sister camp, Chiawa, often win awards. Because of its position on the riverbanks, guests can go on game drives and walks to see big game as well as on water-based activities such as tiger-fishing and canoeing.
Details All-inclusive doubles from £1,532 (oldmondoro.com)
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