The Quiet Route Down the Zambezi

Met at the gate, walked through customs, then a short walk to the door. Every southern route runs through here. A heated pool, a good dinner, and an early flight north.

Twelve tented suites on decks above the Zambezi, inside Zambia's smallest park, close enough that the falls carry into camp. This is the only wildlife area in the country holding white rhino, and you walk in on them with the national parks scouts who guard them. The falls from the Zambian side, Livingstone town and its museum, a village and the curio shops past it. The river at sundown, from the water.

Six tents in the Linkwasha-Makalolo Private Wilderness Area, set in teak woodland and Kalahari sand with a waterhole running busy below the pool deck. A log-pile hide drops you to ground level with whatever comes in to drink. Drives push out into the national park while the concession keeps the traffic off, which is why the afternoons here run as long as they do. A star bed at Madison Pan for a night outside, and time with the Scorpion Anti-Poaching Unit for the part of this that isn't scenery.

Three tents on low wooden decks inside the private Ruckomechi Concession, looking across the Zambezi at the Zambian foothills. Albida forest all around, and in the dry season the floodplain pulls game to the water in numbers you can count from the plunge pool. Walking is the point here. Lions rest under winter thorns at close range and wild dogs work the floodplain at first light. Canoe the river, cruise it at dusk, cast for tigerfish and put it back. One night on an elevated platform under open sky.