The valley of the leopard — the highest concentration of leopard in Africa, the birthplace of the walking safari, and the wildlife-dense floodplain of the Luangwa River where a single afternoon produces encounters that most reserves require a week to match
South Luangwa National Park (9,050 sq km, in the Eastern Province of Zambia at the southern end of the Luangwa Rift Valley — the branch of the Great East African Rift that terminates in the Luangwa Valley rather than reaching the Indian Ocean) is consistently ranked among the top five wildlife destinations in Africa, distinguished from the more famous East African parks (Serengeti, Maasai Mara, Kruger) by three characteristics: the highest density of leopard of any wildlife reserve in Africa (the Luangwa leopard population is estimated at 300-400 individuals in the main park, with leopard sig…
The Luangwa Valley's human history includes evidence of continuous habitation from at least 100,000 years ago (stone tool sites throughout the valley). The Bisa people (the Bantu-speaking cattle and fishing people of the Luangwa Valley) inhabited the valley before the Ngoni invasions of the 1830s-1840s (the Ngoni, Zulu-related warrior people, swept north from South Africa displacing many central African communities). The British colonial administration (the British South Africa Company and later the Colonial Office administered Northern Rhodesia until independence in 1964) established the Gam…