Zambia

The birthplace of the walking safari, South Luangwa is home to some of the finest guides in Africa and a wildlife density — particularly leopard, elephant, and hippo along the Luangwa River — that rivals anywhere on the continent. Night drives reveal rarely-seen species including civets, genets, and honey badgers, while the walking safaris here are considered the most authentic in Africa.

The world's largest waterfall by volume, Victoria Falls drops 108 metres across a 1,708-metre-wide face, generating a spray cloud visible from 50 kilometres away — the local name Mosi-oa-Tunya means 'The Smoke That Thunders.' The Zambian side offers the spray forests, the Devil's Pool natural infinity pool, and microlight flights over the falls at sunrise.

A narrow wilderness strip of riverine forest and flood plains between the Zambezi River and the Zambezi Escarpment, Lower Zambezi is one of Africa's last places where you can canoe past drinking elephants and pods of hippos on a genuinely wild and remote river. The park's extremely low visitor numbers and exceptional private camps give a sense of profound exclusivity.

The largest national park in Zambia and one of the largest in the world at 22,400 square kilometres, Kafue is rarely visited and home to an extraordinary diversity of wildlife including cheetah, wild dog, roan antelope, and the Kafue lechwe found only in this ecosystem. Its very size and low visitor numbers make game drives here feel like genuine exploration.

Accessible only on foot or by light aircraft, North Luangwa is one of Africa's most remote and least-visited wilderness areas, where walking safaris led by expert trackers provide encounters with buffalo herds of several thousand, lions, and black rhino without another vehicle or person in sight for days. The exclusivity here is absolute.

Home to the second-largest wildebeest migration in Africa and managed jointly by the Lozi people and African Parks, Liuwa is one of the continent's last truly wild and undiscovered parks. Between October and January, 40,000 wildebeest gather on the wide-open flood plains alongside enormous lion prides and Africa's largest concentration of spotted hyenas.