Walking the Luangwa: What You Only Notice on Foot

The first thing you notice when you step down from the vehicle is the sound. Without an engine, the valley fills in: francolins calling, the dry rattle of leaves, the distant grunt of a hippo in a lagoon. Then you notice your own footsteps, and how loud they are.

The briefing

Every walk in the Luangwa Valley begins the same way. The guide gathers the group, the scout checks his rifle, and you hear the rules: single file, no talking unless necessary, stop when the guide stops, and never run. It sounds dramatic. In practice it creates a kind of shared concentration that is rare anywhere, let alone on holiday.

Reading the ground

On foot, the ground becomes a newspaper. A guide crouches over a print in the sand and reads it aloud: a hyena, heading towards the river, probably last night, because the edges have softened with the dew. A scuff where a francolin dust-bathed. The spoor of a leopard laid over the tyre track you drove along yesterday. You start to see that the bush is not empty between sightings. It is full of stories you have been driving past.

The small things

Walking turns your attention to things you would never stop a vehicle for: the antlion pits in the shade of a tree, the sausage tree’s heavy fruit, the way an elephant has stripped bark from a mopane. Guides carry a remarkable store of knowledge about plants and their uses, and a walk is as much a lesson in how the ecosystem fits together as it is a search for animals.

And the big animals

You will meet big animals on foot, but differently. A herd of buffalo lifts its heads at a hundred metres. An elephant, tolerant of vehicles, turns and watches. The guide reads its ears and posture, and you move away quietly, at an angle. Nothing dramatic happens — that is the point of good guiding — but your heart rate tells you that you are not watching a documentary. You are in it.

Why it matters

Walking safaris were pioneered in this valley in the 1950s and 60s, and they remain the best way we know to understand the bush rather than simply observe it. If you are planning a first safari, consider giving at least a couple of mornings to walking. It may well be the part you remember longest. Read our guide to walking safaris and to Zambia.