Travel+Leisure India & South Asia – August 2019

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Lusaka

DEMOCRATICREPUBLIC

OFCONGO

TANZANIA

MALAWI

MOZAMBIQUE

Kaingo

Camp

Mwamba

Camp

SouthLuangwa

NationalPark

LUANGWA

RIVER

Shoebill

Island

Camp

Bangweulu

Wetlands

ILLUSTRATION BY MEGHNA PATWAL

Zambia

read the e-mail. The sender, a naturalist

named Rod Tether who was to be my

guide in Zambia, added: “You may want

to bring along a pair of shoes that you

don’t mind getting wet.”

Bangweulu is a miraculous,

5,9oo-square-kilometre expanse of

marsh in northern Zambia. It is also one

of the last homes of the iconic, elusive

shoebill—a prehistoric-looking bird with

an eight-foot wingspan found only in the

remotest swamps of Africa. Few people

have seen one. Rod has, though.

Having travelled with Rod on other

adventures—a hippo bit our canoe

in half on an earlier trip in western

Zambia—I suspected that “some wading”

would involve us plunging up to our

necks through swamps like the ghosts of

explorers David Livingstone and Henry

Morton Stanley.

The reality wasn’t far off. In Bangweulu,

you seem to paddle through the sky, so

brightly are its endless blues reflected in

the water. We crossed lily ponds that would

have made an Impressionist painter

swoon, their white, mauve, and blue

flowers floating amid clumps of

phragmites and papyrus. As we waded,

dragging our canoes, using distant trees

as way-finders and jumping between

broken dikes in pursuit of a mysterious

beast, it felt as if we were on a quest from

an antique time.

I had come to Zambia, a landlocked

country in the heart of southern Africa,

to experience two very different

ecosystems—and two equally distinct

models of conservation. We began in Big

Five territory, at South Luangwa Natural Park, where the

family-run Shenton Safaris operates two long-established

camps. One of the oldest national parks in Zambia, South

Luangwa is an outstanding model of the traditional

relationship between tourism, community, and wildlife.

We then flew to the remote world of Bangweulu, where

African Parks—a donor-led conservation NGO working in

some of the continent’s most vulnerable, inaccessible

places—has opened a way for visitors to experience these

extraordinary wetlands. On the butterfly-shaped map of

Zambia, this is not a huge distance, essentially just up a

vein in the right wing. But the adventure I had in these

two very different ecosystems tells a deeper story about

how humans and wildlife might find a way to share the

planet—to the benefit of all.

WE SET OUT ON OUR first game drive in South Luangwa

just as the sun began to set. Rod sat behind me as we entered

the reserve, following the beam of the spotlight on our

vehicle as it traversed the bush in the fast-falling night, the

maraca sound of the cicadas and the sweet dusty smell of the

river valley drifting in through the windows.

“Puku—and leopard!” Rod cried, as the spotlight jumped.

Pukus are small antelope, and we had inadvertently saved one

from a violent end. Just 10 metres away, its head down and its

shoulders rolling, was a huge leopard, orange-gold in the light.

“I know this leopard,” said Sylvester Mbaama, our driver

and local guide. “He has a big territory.” A gentle Zambian with

eyes as quick as Rod’s, Sylvester possessed a deep knowledge,

updated daily, of the lives of the creatures we encountered.

“WE’LL NEED TO DO

SOME WADING IN

ORDER TO LOCATE

THE SHOEBILL,”