Zambia Discovery Guide

Zambia has the falls that everyone has seen a picture of and the safaris that almost no one has. Victoria Falls is 1,708 metres of falling river, and behind it lies South Luangwa, where the walking safari was invented and over 400 bird species and 60 mammals live along one river. Then there is Kafue, the second-largest national park in Africa, and the Lower Zambezi across from Mana Pools. And there is Liuwa Plain, where tens of thousands of wildebeest make the continent's second-largest migration for a handful of visitors.

The main travel issue

Distance and season: a plateau the size of France and Germany with a few tarred roads, rains from November to April that close the bush, and lodges priced for the few who reach them.

The solution

Fly -- Livingstone for the falls, the airstrips for the parks -- in the dry months from June to October, when the game gathers at the water. The falls are still full in June and a thin curtain by October. Give Zambia the week most people would split between two better-known countries.

If you travel slowly

Take South Luangwa on foot. The park, 9,050 square kilometres along the Luangwa River, was a game reserve from 1904 and became, under the conservationist Norman Carr, the home of the photographic and walking safari -- guests who shot with cameras, not rifles. A week in one camp, walking in the mornings, is the Zambian safari at its purest.

If you want to see the essentials

Victoria Falls from the Zambian side, in the 66-square-kilometre Mosi-oa-Tunya park, where the Eastern Cataract and the view from Livingstone Island are yours and ten southern white rhinos graze above the gorge; then one of the great parks -- Kafue, with 152 mammal and 515 bird species, or the Lower Zambezi, canoe country opposite Zimbabwe's Mana Pools.

If you seek local character

Livingstone, 177,393 people and the first capital of Northern Rhodesia from 1911 to 1935, is the falls town; Lusaka, 2.2 million people at 1,279 metres, is the capital since 1935 and the country's crossroads. The Kuomboka, at the end of the rains, is the ceremony in which the Litunga, king of the Lozi, moves from his flooded compound at Lealui to Limulunga on higher ground, and the one event in the country worth planning around.

If you want to go beyond the obvious

Liuwa Plain, protected by the Lozi king Lubosi Lewanika in the 1880s and managed with African Parks since 2003, for the wildebeest migration; the Bangweulu wetlands, a Ramsar site and Important Bird Area, for the black lechwe and the shoebill; Lake Tanganyika's Zambian shore, on the largest rift lake in Africa and the second-largest freshwater lake in the world by volume; and Lake Kariba, 223 kilometres of reservoir filled between 1958 and 1963.

Zambia is a young state on old ground: independent on 24 October 1964 under Kenneth Kaunda, who governed a one-party republic from 1972 under the slogan "One Zambia, One Nation" until the multi-party elections of 1991 removed him -- peacefully, which in the region was rare -- and which have removed governments since. English is the language of official business, education and law; Nyanja is the main language of Lusaka, Bemba of the Copperbelt and the north, Lozi of the western floodplain where the Litunga still moves to high ground each year when the Zambezi floods. Seventy-odd languages sit under the one official one, and the country's self-image is of a place that kept the peace between them.

Copper is the other half of the story. The British South Africa Company administered Northern Rhodesia for its mineral rights and its labour, the Copperbelt was the backbone of the colonial economy and of the post-independence hopes, and the price crash of 1973 broke both; in 2018 nearly half the population was counted in multidimensional poverty. The Zambian visitor meets a country that is welcoming, unhurried and short of money, whose game parks are its best-run institutions.

The laws a visitor must know are conservative: same-sex sexual activity is illegal with long sentences, pornography is illegal, dress is expected to be modest and kissing in public is not done. Photography of anything official -- airports, ports, military sites, government buildings, people in uniform -- is prohibited, and identification may be demanded at any time.

Zambia's parks are the responsibility. It is illegal to buy, sell, kill or capture any protected wild animal or trade its parts without a licence, and anyone caught buying or trafficking such goods is prosecuted; the ivory and skin trinkets offered at markets are the test. Drones need authorisation from the Civil Aviation Authority before they fly. The animals themselves are the other side of the same coin: the British advisory's words are that wild animals in the bush, including venomous snakes, are unpredictable and do kill, on land and on water, and the Canadian one adds that they venture into camps -- use reputable guides, follow the camp staff, and do not swim in lakes and rivers.

The falls carry a different risk. Adventure sports in the Victoria Falls area have caused serious accidents and deaths, the quality of medical care varies greatly, and insurance with evacuation cover is the price of the bungee jump; Livingstone Island and the pools on the lip are for the licensed operators' seasons, not for improvisation.

Zambia runs on hydropower and the rains fail; drought has cut the reservoirs and brought prolonged electricity shortages, water restrictions with fines, and crop failure. A visitor's lodge has its generator; the town beside it does not. Travel light on the grid, carry cash in kwacha for the rural places that have no cards or ATMs, and pay local guides rather than imported ones.

January–February -- the height of the rains, November to April: the bush closed in many parks, roads impassable, but the falls filling and the birds at their best; Liuwa's plains green.

March–April -- the rains end, the Zambezi peaks, and the Kuomboka moves the Litunga to high ground; Victoria Falls is at full flood and mostly spray.

May–June -- the cool dry season begins, highs of 21 to 26 degrees and nights of 6 to 12; the parks reopen, the falls are still full and now visible, and the Luangwa walking season starts.

July–August -- the best safari months: cool, dry, the game concentrating at the rivers, nights that can fall toward 5 degrees on the plateau. Book the Luangwa and Lower Zambezi camps early.

September–October -- the hot dry season, 28 to 35 degrees by day and the game at its most visible at the last water; Victoria Falls thins to a curtain on the Zambian side and Livingstone Island opens on foot. The cheapest good weeks.

November–December -- the first rains, the emerald season: the bush greens, the migrant birds arrive, Liuwa's wildebeest gather, and the lodges that stay open drop their prices.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Year-round relative cost index vs country average

Higher — the fly-in safari camps in the dry season, the Victoria Falls hotels

Average — Lusaka, Livingstone town, Kariba

Lower — the Copperbelt and the towns of the Great North Road, everywhere in the rains

Visa and departure-tax figures are the immigration department's and the British advisory's; park fees and lodge rates are not stated because no authority that sets them answered, and the relative bands are editorial judgment.