Malawi

The dry season runs roughly May to October and has two distinct halves. May to July is cool and dry, and Malawi's altitude range makes that mean different things in different places: 25 °C on the lakeshore, and frost on the Nyika Plateau above 2,000 metres in June and July. Bring a proper jacket for Nyika even if the rest of your packing is for the lake.

August to October is warm, dry and the best game viewing. By September and October the Shire River in Liwonde is the only reliable water and elephant, hippo and waterbuck concentrate on it, which is when the boat safaris come into their own. October and early November are the hottest, most airless weeks of the year.

The lake runs on a different clock, and this is the detail most itineraries miss. Water clarity is at its worst during and just after the rains, when runoff carries silt into the lake, and at its best from around August through December. If snorkelling or diving with the mbuna cichlids matters to you, that window is what you plan around: the difference between five metres of visibility and twenty is the difference between a swim and one of the best freshwater dives in the world. The mwera wind blows from the south-east in the cooler months and can make boat transfers to the islands uncomfortable.

The rains, November to April, bring migrant birds, green landscapes, newborn game, low prices and very few visitors, plus mango season and the Nyika Plateau in flower, with hundreds of orchid species across the grassland from December to March. The costs: the road up to Nyika becomes slippery and can close, the Livingstonia escarpment road becomes a serious proposition, lake clarity drops, and parts of the lower Shire valley flood.

The road network is built around one spine. The M1 runs the length of the country from Karonga in the north through Mzuzu, Kasungu and Lilongwe down to Blantyre, tar throughout, with quality that varies from good to patched. The M5 lakeshore road is the scenic alternative for parts of the route and has genuinely rough sections.

Malawi is a small country that drives like a large one. Lilongwe to Blantyre is around 310 kilometres and takes four to five hours because of trucks, villages, speed humps and the density of people, bicycles and livestock on the roadside. It is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa, which is also why night driving is inadvisable here.

Two climbs define the driving. The road up to the Nyika Plateau from Rumphi is roughly 100 kilometres of gravel, takes about three hours, gains well over a thousand metres and needs a 4x4; in the wet it turns slick and is sometimes impassable. The Gorode escarpment road up to Livingstonia from Chitimba climbs around a thousand metres in roughly fifteen kilometres over more than fifteen hairpin bends, unsurfaced and narrow with drops. It is low-range work and should not be attempted in the rain.

Fuel is the one place on our list where availability, not distance, is the planning constraint. Malawi imports all its fuel and pays for it in foreign currency, so when reserves are tight, supply becomes intermittent: queues, stations with no stock, and a day or two of scarcity before deliveries resume. The response is simple: never pass a station with stock when you are below three-quarters of a tank, and carry two 20-litre jerry cans. Lilongwe, Blantyre, Mzuzu and Zomba are the most reliable. We check conditions before every departure and build the fuel stops into the routing.

Police roadblocks are frequent, courteous and quick; have the vehicle papers and your licence to hand. Kwacha for fuel and shops, dollars at most lodges. Card acceptance is limited outside the cities, and ATMs in smaller towns run out of cash at weekends.

Malawi works best as a two-week trip, or as a one-week second half attached to Zambia. The natural shape runs along the spine, north to south or south to north: a wildlife reserve, the highlands, then the lake for as long as you can justify.

• 3 nightsLiwonde National Park

  Malawi's best wildlife experience and the clearest evidence of what two decades of restoration have achieved. Three nights on the Shire River covers a boat safari at dusk among hippo and elephant, a morning drive for the reintroduced cheetah and lion, and the black rhino sanctuary. September and October are the peak, and the birding is exceptional in its own right.

• 2 nightsMajete Wildlife Reserve

  Where the Malawian conservation story started in 2003, in a reserve that had lost essentially everything. It is a Big Five reserve now. Pair it with Liwonde, since both sit in the south; Majete is quieter, more wooded and hillier.

• 3 nightsNyika Plateau

  Rolling montane grassland above 2,000 metres that looks like the Scottish Highlands until a roan antelope walks through it. High leopard density, over two hundred orchid species in flower from December to March, and horse riding as a good way to see it. Three nights, because the drive up from Rumphi costs most of a day at each end.

• 3–4 nightsLake Malawi — Cape Maclear

  The southern lake and the site of Lake Malawi National Park, the first freshwater national park in Africa inscribed as a World Heritage Site. Snorkelling and diving among the mbuna cichlids, kayaking, and the option to move offshore to Mumbo or Domwe island. Four nights if you want an island as well as the mainland.

• 3–4 nightsLikoma Island & the northern lake

  Likoma sits in Mozambican waters but is Malawian territory and has an improbably large stone cathedral built by missionaries in 1903. Reaching it on the Ilala ferry, which has run the lake for decades and stops at villages along the way, is a trip in itself. Fly in if time is short.

• 2 nightsZomba Plateau & the Shire Highlands

  Malawi's old colonial capital sits below a plateau of pine and evergreen forest with waterfalls, trout streams and views over the Shire valley. A natural break between the southern reserves and the lake. The Mulanje massif further south is a multi-day hiking proposition.

• 2 nightsNkhotakota Wildlife Reserve

  The destination for the 500 Elephants translocation and the newest of the restoration projects to open properly to visitors. Miombo woodland, the Bua River, and a reserve still visibly in recovery, so game viewing is harder work than at Liwonde. It breaks the drive between Lilongwe and the northern lake.

Malawi asks for patience and a plan for fuel. The driving is not technically hard, since the M1 is tar and most of the lakeshore is reachable in a high-clearance 2x4, but it is slow and densely populated, and the two climbs that matter, Nyika and Livingstonia, are proper 4x4 work. If your itinerary includes either, take the 4x4 for the whole trip.

The equipment list is lighter than Botswana or Zambia: two jerry cans, a good spare, a recovery strap, all your drinking water, and a mosquito strategy you stick to, because Malawi is a year-round malaria country and the lakeshore carries the highest risk. Mobile coverage is good along the M1 and the lakeshore, and absent on Nyika.

Ask locally as you go. Fuel availability, road conditions on the plateau, whether the Ilala is running to schedule, whether the escarpment road has been graded: all of it changes week to week, and every lodge in the country will tell you.

One recommendation we make often: treat Malawi as a lake trip with wildlife attached rather than the other way round. Give the lake five or six nights out of a fortnight, and put an island in the middle.