Travel: Zambia

"Balwearie Road, near the golf course."

So it's day one of this great safari adventure, 5,000 miles from home, and my first acquaintance was brought up 500 yards from my parents' house. And I had been told there's a whole new world out there.

But one moment the talk was of Stark's Park, the next it was Lower Zambezi National Park. The bush landscape looked arid and unforgiving from the air, an impression confirmed in the jeep journey that followed to Chongwe River House. However, with the right protection and plenty of bottled water, the burning sun and intense heat were bearable, even for a paleface from Fife.

The safari house at Chongwe combines luxury with a touch of the Flintstones. Host Brendan – whose wife is from Crieff, good grief! – offered assurance that the ground floor bedroom was perfectly safe, despite the lack of an outside wall, leaving it wide open to passing elephants and hippos. And just to put the mind at ease, the room has its own emergency equipment. A whistle.

After a moonlit Mongolian braai barbecue in the company of ten hippos – who were happy to munch on grass – I headed to bed, waking at 3am to see four giraffes just yards from where I lay. They disappeared when I put my specs on, transforming into trees.

In the morning, a short jeep trip was rewarded with a close encounter with five female lions. An extended view was possible thanks to a stray water buck, which had unwittingly become that day's special on the lunch menu.

It was too early to pack our bags at the amazing Chongwe, but a boat was waiting to take us up the Zambezi to Chiawa Camp, voted one of Africa's top ten safari camps. Here, we enjoyed fantastic opportunities to observe elephants, buffalo, lions and leopard without ever feeling uneasy – even as an inquisitive male lion inspected our open jeep while the sound of cracking bones filled the air as his partner tore a warthog to shreds.

Lions crossed our path again that night, although most of us were asleep as they strolled through our camp. I was just as disappointed to learn I'd missed a passing porcupine.

All too soon we were off on our travels once more, this time flying south to Livingstone, a town with an unmistakeable Scottish influence but definitely not to be confused with its namesake in West Lothian. At the entrance to the airport stands a statue of David Livingstone, the explorer and missionary from Blantyre.

Dr Livingstone's influence is apparent across Zambia, and in the town that bears his name there are a host of reminders of the high regard in which he is held by the nation, including Livingstone Island perched at the top of Victoria Falls where, in 1855, the doctor became the first European to set eyes on Mosi-Oa-Tunya, "the smoke that thunders". It is unlikely that he was offered the chance to swim in the Devil's Pool, a natural rock formation on the very lip of the cascading torrent, but tourists can take their lives in their own hands – after first signing a disclaimer – by swimming across the Zambezi only yards from the waterfall to the most spectacular plunge pool on earth. This particular sightseer was more concerned that the blazing mid-day sunshine and 40-degree heat might require the services of Dr Livingstone's porters to get me home.

The rock formation provides the pool with a wall that makes it possible to look right over the edge of one of the seven natural wonders of the world into the chasm below. But no-one had told us what lay beneath the surface. Never mind being inches from certain death: there were fish in the water, and the little beggars were nibbling at our legs.

For intrepid travellers who survive the attack of the man-eating tiddlers in the Devil's Pool, a kayak trip up the croc-infested Zambezi was never going to be a problem – other than the tricky bit through the rapids where I lost control completely – and provided a memorable means of arrival at Sindabezi Island. This exclusive retreat pulls off the unlikely trick of providing privacy despite the thatched chalets being open-fronted – sort of penthouse meets treehouse – and offering no more than a mosquito net between bed and bush. There is no electricity, and the evenings are illuminated by the glow of hurricane lamps. However, some might feel that the disconnection with the mainland is too restricting. A visit to the market in Livingstone brought us back to reality with an eye-opening illustration of the level of poverty.

With these images firmly implanted in our minds, we were ready for the final leg of our journey, to South Luangwa National Park. Mud huts and trading stalls lined the way as we drove from the airport to the Luangwa Safari House in what seemed to be the only vehicle on the road, with countless waves and shouted greetings ensuring this would be the most memorable journey of all.

The impressive house, run by Robin Pope Safaris, has the feel of a castle and looks out over a lagoon where a waterhole is frequented by herds of elephants and journeys of giraffes. A walking safari added a new dimension through the potential for the unexpected, although fortunately not the kind of surprise that required our escort to use his rifle.

From a personal point of view, a visit to a local school will live with me always. To build the safari tourism trade, operators had to persuade the locals to stop killing the exhibits. They were encouraged to produce cotton as an alternative way to put food on the table – then the bottom fell out of the cotton market. Now, however, education is the great hope.

Not much more than 24 hours later, a walk on a Fife beach with my own children started to put life into perspective. It is the oldest clich in the book, but a visit to Africa is a life-changing experience.

THE FACTS Donald Walker travelled with the Zambia Tourist Board (www.zambiatourism.com) and Kenya Airways, which flies from London to Lusaka and has launched a new service to Ndola International Airport in the Copperbelt province of Zambia, all via Nairobi. See www.kenya-airways.com or for reservations call 020 8283 1818. Accommodation was provided by Chongwe River House (from 350pppn, minimum 4 adults), Chiawa Camp (380), Sindabezi Island (265) and the Luangwa Safari House (350, minimum 4 adults) all of which are members of the Zambian Horizons (www.zambianhorizons.com) collection.

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This article was originally published in The Scotsman on 27 February 2010