Things to do
Things to Do in Zambia
Safari, water, wildlife spectacles, waterfalls and history — sorted by what you actually want from a day.
Photo: S1m0nB3rry, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The things to do in Zambia are not evenly spread across the country. Zambia’s attractions are not evenly spread and several of the best ones happen for only a few weeks a year. This page sets out what there is to do, and — more usefully — when each thing is possible, so you can build a trip around the ones that matter to you.
Things to do in Zambia: safari and wildlife
- Walking safaris. The guided walking safari was developed in the Luangwa Valley and it remains the country’s signature activity. A walk is slower, quieter and far more about tracks, plants and small things than a drive is.
- Night drives. Permitted in Zambian national parks, which is not true everywhere in Africa, and the reason leopard and other nocturnal species are so much more visible here.
- Canoe safaris. The Lower Zambezi is the place for this — drifting the channels past elephant and hippo rather than driving past them.
- Rhino tracking on foot. Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park outside Livingstone holds white rhino and has no large predators, which is what makes guided walks there possible.
On and around the water
- Victoria Falls from the Zambian side, including the Knife-Edge Bridge and the descent to the Boiling Pot.
- Whitewater rafting in the Batoka Gorge below the falls, on one of the most serious commercially run stretches of river anywhere.
- Devil’s Pool, on the lip of the falls, reachable only from Zambia and only in the low-water months.
- Houseboats and tiger fishing on the Zambian shore of Lake Kariba at Siavonga.
- Snorkelling and diving on Lake Tanganyika, the world’s second-deepest lake, which holds cichlid species found nowhere else.
Things to do in Zambia: the wildlife spectacles
| Event | Where | When, roughly |
|---|---|---|
| Straw-coloured fruit bat migration — around ten million animals | Kasanka National Park | October to December, peaking November into early December |
| Blue wildebeest migration, 40,000–47,000 animals | Liuwa Plain National Park | Gathering to a peak around November |
| Shoebill and black lechwe | Bangweulu Wetlands | About May to July |
| Lion and lechwe on the flooded grassland | Busanga Plains, northern Kafue | Accessible early July to early November only |
| Peak flow at Victoria Falls | Livingstone | Building to a peak around April and May |
Waterfalls beyond Victoria
Waterfalls are among the most underrated things to do in Zambia.
Zambia has far more waterfalls than the famous one. Kalambo Falls on the Tanzanian border drops 235 metres in a single uninterrupted fall. Ngonye Falls on the upper Zambezi in the west is a broad rock-ledge fall on the main river. The north has a whole circuit — Lumangwe, Kabwelume, Ntumbachushi, Chishimba and Kundalila among them — best from about March to June when the rivers are full.
Culture, history and people
Not all the things to do in Zambia involve wildlife.
- Livingstone Museum, Zambia’s oldest and largest, with collections dating from 1930 and five galleries.
- Kalambo Falls archaeology, where wooden structures were dated in 2023 to roughly 476,000 years ago.
- Kuomboka, the Lozi royal ceremony marking the move off the flooded Barotse plain — its date is set by the flood, not the calendar.
- Chimfunshi, near Chingola, home to around 154 rescued chimpanzees on some 10,000 hectares.
- The Copperbelt, where the scale of open-cast mining is a landscape in its own right.
We do not publish entry fees, opening hours or tour prices. They change often, they vary by nationality and residency, and a stale number sends people to a gate with the wrong money. Check with the operator or authority close to your date.
Where to go next
- Zambia safaris and tours
- Adventure activities
- Zambia itineraries — how to fit these into a route
- All Zambia destinations
- Travel planning
Sources
Facts and figures on this page are drawn from the following. Where sources disagree we say so in the text.