Safaris in South Luangwa National Park

Most people who visit Zambia come for the unspoiled wilderness and huge diversity of wildlife. Top of their must-visit locations will be South Luangwa – and with good reason. The southernmost of three parks in the beautiful Luangwa Valley, it’s Zambia’s most celebrated national park, regularly touted as the finest place in Africa to see wildlife. Hippos crowd the Luangwa River and huge herds of Cape buffalo and elephant, often in their hundreds, graze the grasslands and splash between the river’s islands. Impalas, pukus, waterbucks and giraffes nibble the open plains, routinely trailed by lions, while the park’s famously healthy population of leopards hunts in the dense woodlands.

In addition, over 400 species of birds call the park home, from predatory snake eagles to jewel-bright bee-eaters. South Luangwa’s reputation is well deserved, and best of all, there’s no catch. It’s teeming with wildlife but not with visitors; a wilderness gem too hard to reach to be crowded, where animals don’t just thrive, they rule.

South Luangwa is a model of responsible safaris, and always has been. In the 1950s, British conservationist and all round responsible tourism hero Norman Carr persuaded the Paramount Chief of the Kunda people in the Luangwa Valley to set aside a portion of tribal land as a reserve. Carr then built a game viewing camp and opened it to the public, replacing the track and kill safari model that had previously run here with a conservation holiday that involved shooting the wildlife with cameras instead of rifles.

Carr also pioneered the walking safari and as a result, South Luangwa’s legendary status as the home of photographic and walking safaris was established. Carr had a decidedly ahead-of-his-time vision of conservation through tourism. His ambition was to secure the future of the unique wilderness of the Luangwa Valley by making sure that local people directly benefited from the conservation of its wildlife and habitat, and so the profits made by his safari camp were returned to the local community. He died in 1997 but his inspiring legacy lives on in South Luangwa, which remains a thriving habitat for wildlife and a place where tourism has grown gently, sensitively and responsibly. Norman, we salute you.

It’s really not hard to see wildlife in South Luangwa – no time-consuming stakeouts, no ‘is-it, isn’t-it?’ long distance sightings. You’ll see hippos and crocodiles as soon as you cross the bridge over the Luangwa River, and elephants are hard to miss along the river’s banks. Massive herds of mighty Cape buffalo roam throughout the park, and there are lots of different antelopes nibbling and noodling in the grasslands, including impala, waterbucks, bushbucks and pukus, which are rarely seen outside Zambia.

These creatures keep the lion prides and rare African hunting dogs that live in South Luangwa fed and are also favoured prey of the leopards that live here in one of the highest densities in the world. There are endemic species, too, most notably the pretty Thornicraft's giraffe, with white legs and faces, and Crawshay's zebra. Don’t expect the Big Five though – the park’s black rhinos were sadly wiped out as a result of poaching by 1987.