Why Kasanka belongs on your Zambia bucket list
Watch a wetland wake up, paddle the Luwombwa River and look up as millions of fruit bats take flight. This is a Zambia safari worth making time for.
At first light in Kasanka, you might find yourself up a tree, looking out over a swamp and willing a patch of reeds to move again. It might be the wind. It might be a sitatunga, the secretive antelope that makes its home in the wetlands below. By afternoon, you could be seeing the park at water level, following a bend in the Luwombwa River by canoe. And if you’re here during the migration, you’ll want to be back outside at dusk. That’s when the sky gets busy.
There’s a whole day of discovery between those first and last hours. Give Kasanka enough time and you’ll find yourself looking for things you didn’t even know to put on your list.
Cover photo by Jackie Peel
Start the day above the reeds
Fibwe Hide looks out over the Kapabi Swamp from high in a tree. It’s a place to settle in with binoculars and let your eyes adjust to the landscape. Watch the edges of the reeds for a sitatunga, a semi-aquatic antelope that can vanish into cover in a few steps. If one crosses a gap, you’ll understand why people who’ve seen one still go back to look again.
Sitatunga photo by Gerry Taylor
On a game drive or guided walk, the view changes as you move from wetland to woodland. Look for puku in the open and keep an eye on the branches around Fibwe for blue monkeys. You can spend a surprisingly long time in one spot when there’s that much to watch.
Take the river at paddle speed
A canoe on the Luwombwa gives you a different vantage point. From the water, you can see into the low branches and along the banks, where a kingfisher might be waiting above the current. Listen for birds from both sides of the river and give yourself time to see what’s around the next bend.
If you’d like to linger, look at a stay at Wasa Lodge or Luwombwa Lodge. A lakeside morning and an afternoon on the river are good reasons to give Kasanka a little more room in your itinerary.
Be outside when the forest takes flight
Between October and December, millions of straw-coloured fruit bats gather in a small patch of Kasanka’s evergreen swamp forest. At dusk, they leave the roost to feed. The first streams of bats are remarkable enough. Then you realise they’re still coming, and there are more wherever you turn your head.
Bat photo courtesy of Kasanka Trust Ltd
November falls within the usual migration window. If this is the sight you’ve always wanted to see, build your visit around an evening at a bat hide and leave the following morning free to see what else the park has in store.
Fly to the park where Sky Trails began
Kasanka is where Edmund Farmer started Sky Trails in 2003. More than two decades later, it’s still one of our favourite places to send people. It fits so much into a small corner of Zambia. You can spend the morning looking for an antelope that disappears into reeds and the evening watching a migration that fills the sky. In between, there’s a river worth taking slowly.
Ready to put Kasanka on your bucket list? Ask us about the Sky Trails Kasanka Special.
Tell us your preferred travel dates, where you’d like to fly from and how many people are coming. We’ll talk you through the flight options and current offer details.
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