TRAVEL | Malawi
I grew up listening to the travelling tales of my grandparents, many of which involved a caravan and thousands of kilometres.
After retirement, they packed up and hit the road - sometimes for months at a time. Their stories were enough to instil the travel bug in me before I'd really been anywhere.
Those stories of lions' roars echoing in the night and my gran legging it back to camp after encountering a stealthy herd of elephants did it for me.
Travelling in Africa is special; I knew even then. Each experience is steeped in culture and a primal sense of adventure. And I am pleased to report that Malawi fits the bill perfectly.
It's a tiny country — 840 km from north to south — sandwiched between Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique and it's a landlocked adventure bomb that surprises.
How you do Malawi is up to you. Low and slow with a 4×4 and a caravan; or like me: seven days, a taxi and three vastly different locations. Either way, you'll go back home with the kind of stories that'll inspire others to explore The Warm Heart of Africa.
TIME TO MOVE
Salantiel was behind the wheel, and while his driving can't be faulted, I quickly learnt that whatever time on the road we were given should be doubled. It's just over two hours from Lilongwe to Blue Zebra Island Lodge, but, at the other end of that time, paradise awaits.
The countryside was as dry as biltong, and I wondered when the burnt-red sand that flanked the main
