Дочерний поход в Национальный парк Лайзер Замбези: семья погружается в дикую природу Замбии

After 24 hours of travel and an arrival at ochre-vermillion dusk by boat down the Zambezi, a Noah’s flood world, the first thing my 14-year-old daughter notices are the sounds: a bush that thrums with the natter of birds. The fluting refrain of the ring-necked dove, a burst of Morse code percussion; and the glassy whistle of the tropical boubou. “It’s loud, but I like it,” she says, as she lies down on her under-canvas bed in our first camp, Kutali. We fall asleep in the pitch black listening to hippo chat, the comical sound of bassoons tuning up. The winterthorn forest that has grown up on the sandy river bank shades our camp. Here, bathing elephants emerge dripping from the river to rub themselves against the bark of trees, and sometimes stand on their hind legs to drag fruit from branches as they move past the tents. By October, I’m told, you can’t move for elephants. It’s the absolute beginning of the season in Lower Zambezi National Park. Early April is well before most visitors arrive, which is from July onwards, when the vegetation has died back. Now, after the tail end of the rains, everything is wrapped in verdancy, the animals are harder to see, leopards remain hidden and even the alarm calls guides rely upon to find apex predators are fewer – because the baboons and birds are seeing less. Yet the bush feels complete, and the park is practically devoid of vehicles. We are accompanied by expert guides, and have them, and this world, all to ourselves. At Kutali, Johan Kalindawalo and laser-eyed Haggai Chalimba, both calm and low-key, can spot the ghostly outline of a leopard under river bank trees from what seems like a mile away. They understand why an elephant is stressed and its temporal gland is dripping, or the hazards a hyena is facing when negotiating where to cross a river channel. We spend our first days bumping around thick forests of winterthorn, the canopy casting a bluish haze. Tiny red-billed queleas disperse before us like naughty, chatty sprinkles of fairy dust, and tick-eating oxpeckers ride on the backs of the elephants that appear out of nowhere. Before our vehicle, impala herds scatter, and the white-ringed rumps of waterbucks. Kudus race by, and suspicious herds of dust-rolling zebras. Baboons are rollicking everywhere, babies flying on their backs. We go catch-and-release fly-fishing for bream and tigerfish on the shimmering expanse of the Zambezi. Pods of hippos seem to move under every rippling surface, popping up and down like whack-a-moles at the arrival and departure of our boat. I have no expectations that my teenage daughter will be different here to how she is at home, which is fortunate. Sometimes I look behind, where she’s lurking at the back of the open-air safari vehicle, hoping to share a look of amazement about the antics of baboons, and find she’s reading a fantasy novel, annoyingly unfazed by all the African beauty. At other times her senses seem pricked up, like for the lion lying on his back, legs splayed in undignified repose as he cools himself after a meal. At 12-ish years old, his belly is scarred from fights and he’s slightly losing his touch, says Kalindawalo. We follow him for a while as he gets up and walks every now and then, roaring halfheartedly for his brother and the pride, but no one seems to be answering. Lower Zambezi National Park is a slice of perfection. Shoehorned between the Zambezi River and the Zambezi Escarpment that looms beyond, it occupies a slim riverine corridor, contained but vast, a parallel universe of forests, floodplains and woodland. Wildlife funnels through in spades, moving daily between water and higher ground. Hippo channels have been carved, trampled and maintained for hundreds of years. Elephants move purposefully up and down, their memories carrying generational knowledge of the land before it was dammed in 1959, and from when the park was a hunting reserve (before 1983, when it was gazetted as a national park). To our eyes this is a utopian world in symbiosis. In reality it’s carefully managed by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife – with support from Conservation Lower Zambezi – and the strict limitation of lodges and infrastructure. Luke Evans, who grew up in various Zambian national parks in a safari family, and speaks Chi Nyanja, teamed up with business partner Kyle Branch – an ex-AndBeyond Kruger-raised private guide he met working at Sausage Tree Camp – to open Kutali and Chula Island camps in the Lower Zambezi. They’ve since joined forces with the founders of Jeffery & McKeith Safaris in Kafue National Park to create Classic Zambia Safaris, which operates like-minded camps in Kafue, and has just launched in North Luangwa. Evans and Branch started the two camps in 2018, and at that time they were conceived as mobile fly‑camping spots suited to a four-to-six-night journey, with guests moving between them on foot, by canoe and by vehicle via islands, channels, floodplains and forests. As they’re only 7.5 miles apart, visitors can choose either camp over the other, or move between the two. I’ve gone with this outfit, following the advice of Yellow Zebra Safaris, for a reason: it’s my daughter’s first safari, and at 14 years, she’s just old enough to go on a walking safari and in a canoe, according to the local wildlife authority. And because she is hardy – a former scout who prefers sleeping bags to spas, and accepts discomfort as a part of life – I wanted her to experience wilderness in its fullest sense. Not as a spectacle, but something to be immersed in, like she can be in nature at home. Classic Zambia Safaris is an unusual operator in the park because it strives to strip out the insulation between traveller and bush in its 12-guests-max Kutali and Chula Island camps. Evans and Branch have intentionally swerved the walkways, buggies and pool suites that are becoming standard in safari lodges – this is bucket-shower, canvas-tent and sandy-floor territory, and the price tag is about half as fancy too. These may be bush camps, but we are still treated beautifully. Meals unfold under the shade of mahoganies, or on river banks reached by pontoon boat, and are produced from clever, container-set kitchens: breakfasts of nshima porridge made from mealie meal (or oats) and fruit; mid-morning bush-set treats of sesame bagels; lunches of couscous and aubergine salad; afternoon snacks of pineapple upside-down cake; and sundowners of gin and tonics with floating shards of ice, and Mosi beer. Over a supper of bream ceviche and slow-cooked beef short rib, Evans expounds his simple ethos: that in a park increasingly associated with high-end experiences, Classic Zambia has gone in another direction – back to the old school. As with the best safaris, those who guide us through the landscape grew up within sight of it. Most of the staff, including Kalindawalo and Chalimba at Kutali and Nathan Maingala at Chula Island, come from Mugurameno, a village about 44 miles away. Some guides have trained through local initiatives such as Conservation Lower Zambezi, but most learn on the job. After a few days at Kutali we move to Chula Island camp on Katengahumba Island, close to the game-rich Jeki Plain. Separated from the mainland by a hippo-heavy channel, and with its fan-cooled canvas tents shaded by the thick, robust canopies of mature natal mahoganies, crocodile-laced sandy beaches and open grassy wetlands known as dambos, it brings new meaning to the phrase “private island”. Walking safaris are a way to feel closer to the bush. On Jeki Plain, circled by leadwoods, we leave the vehicle under a rain tree and make contact with the earth. Walking with an armed officer toting a.375-caliber rifle, whose eye is following the buffaloes on the horizon, our attention can narrow to tracks, droppings and insects – and the complex worlds of termite mounds. Our guide, Leon Mwenya Bwalya, talks about the depopulation of the Lower Zambezi Valley, which happened over several decades during the mid-20th century, partly because of sleeping sickness epidemics caused by the tsetse fly. Another guide present says his grandmother, who lived till she was more than a hundred, remembered the villages. For me, walking in the bush is priceless, but I know that the quietness of these moments is a challenge for my daughter, who lacks patience. It’s fine – it’s character-building. Chula Island gives us that precious leopard moment. Close to the river crossing, Chalimba spots the creature lying under a bush in archetypal repose, her pristine fur reminiscent of a thousand winter coat rip-offs, her giant curled paws like a soft toy’s. On an afternoon that will stay with me forever, we set out in double canoes – guides in front – along the Discovery Channel (no pun intended, I assume), the slow-moving body of water that keeps Chula Island private. Leading the way is guide Richard Njobvu, a man whose confident presence and melodious booming voice exude the energy of a pastor, and who I would probably follow into church. I had thought twice about canoeing with hippos, after an old Zambia hand admitted it “freaked me out”. From here to where the channel pops out onto the Zambezi, pods of hippos wallow in every pool. All is silent, apart from the honking, braying and snorting of our semi-submerged friends. From a canoe I become acutely aware of our size compared to theirs, and there are moments that feel distinctly uncomfortable. At one point, disturbed hippos practically jog from the water to evade our approach: we hang back. At another, a fallen tree narrows the channel into a bottleneck we have to pass through. The trunk is lined menacingly with hippos, one opening his mouth to bare massive canines in a warning display. Later I ask my daughter, “Did you like it?” “Yes,” she replies, emphatically. “But were you scared?” “No.” She laughs. Scared, though, I reflect, is not quite the word. What I had felt more was aliveness. A too-unfamiliar heightened awareness of being present with all my senses. And perhaps that is what I had wanted her to experience the most: a place that demanded attention. Yellow Zebra Safaris offers six nights in Lower Zambezi National Park, with stays at Chula Island and Kutali camps, for £5,491 per person, all-inclusive; yellowzebrasafaris.com