Zambia

Zambia is the safari country that other safari countries quietly send their guides to learn from. Landlocked, sparsely populated and largely undeveloped, it offers a wilder, lower-key experience than its better-marketed neighbours — and it is the place where the walking safari, led on foot rather than from a vehicle, was effectively invented.

The South Luangwa valley is the heart of it: one of Africa's great concentrations of wildlife, and the home of that walking tradition. The Lower Zambezi, along the river that names it, adds canoeing among the hippos and elephants; the vast Kafue and the seasonal wildebeest gathering on the Liuwa Plain reward travellers willing to go further still. And Zambia shares Victoria Falls — Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders — with Zimbabwe, the town of Livingstone sitting on the Zambian bank.

June through October is the dry season and the prime window — the bush thinning, the animals drawing to the rivers, the walking at its best. The falls are at their most powerful earlier in the year, just after the rains, which is the trade-off to weigh.