Zimbabwe

Ask anyone to picture Zimbabwe and the image that comes to mind is almost certainly Victoria Falls, the thundering curtain of water the Kololo people named Mosi-oa-Tunya, “The Smoke That Thunders.” Straddling the border with Zambia, it sends spray hundreds of metres into the air as the Zambezi River drops over 100 metres into the gorge below. Walk along the rainforest paths for close-up views, take to the sky in a helicopter for the full scale of it, or throw yourself into the white water below on a rafting trip. A little upstream, the quieter waters of Zambezi National Park make for easy game drives and good fishing, without the crowds that gather near the falls themselves.

But Zimbabwe rewards anyone willing to travel beyond its most famous landmark. In the south, Matobo National Park’s balancing granite boulders and San rock art paintings tell a story that stretches back thousands of years, while Hwange National Park, the country’s largest, unfolds into open savannah roamed by all of the Big Five. Track them on a game drive, a guided walk, or even from horseback. Further along the Zambezi, Mana Pools has earned its UNESCO status through sheer wildness, a floodplain forest where walking safaris bring visitors astonishingly close to elephant, lion and wild dog. Two lesser-known parks reward those chasing solitude: Chizarira, tucked into a rugged, remote escarpment in the northwest, and Gonarezhou in the southeast, where red sandstone cliffs rise above a landscape now thriving with recovering elephant herds, one of the continent’s great conservation turnarounds.

History runs just as deep here. The stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest ancient structure south of the Sahara, mark what was once the capital of a powerful medieval African kingdom, its walls still standing centuries later.

From the roar of the falls to the silence of the bush and the weight of centuries-old stone, Zimbabwe offers a journey through beauty, wildlife and history in equal measure.