Explore Malawi's highlands national parks and the shimmering shores of Lake Malawi on this 10 day journey blending wildlife safaris lakeside relaxation and warm cultural encounters across the heart of southern Africa.
Malawi: Majete Wildlife Reserve
Malawi: Majete Wildlife Reserve
🚗 Driving Ourselves for the First Time
For our visits to Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania we’d had tour guides who collected us from airports and border crossings and ferried us about from place to place, which, if we’re honest, had rather spoiled us. For Malawi, we decided to do things differently and we hired a car, which meant we were properly on our own for the first time in a month. We won’t pretend it wasn’t a little bit worrying, because it was, but having spent four solid weeks being driven around by other people we’d built up a decent picture of what we might encounter on African roads, and there was something rather liberating about having the freedom to set our own pace and stop wherever we fancied. So it was with a fair bit of trepidation, and possibly one too many cups of strong coffee, that we headed out of Blantyre towards our first stop, the Majete Wildlife Reserve, which sits about eighty kilometres from the airport. We’d done our homework properly this time. We had printed off a set of directions the night before, Majete itself had very kindly emailed us their own set of instructions, and on top of that we had a GPS unit sitting on the dashboard, so we felt about as confident as two Englishmen abroad are ever likely to feel that we’d find our way there without too much drama. The road, much to our relief, was tarmacked and in reasonably good nick, so things were looking up from the off. Blantyre itself sits up on a high plain and is ringed by some genuinely impressive mountains, and to get down to Majete we had to come off that plain via the escarpment, which means a steep descent with a fair number of sharp curves thrown in for good measure. It wasn’t too bad in the end, and being a Sunday there weren’t too many lorries to dodge along the way, which we were rather grateful for. We rolled into Majete at lunchtime without a single hiccup, which felt like something of a triumph after all our worrying. I should say, for anyone back home picturing some sort of white-knuckle dash through the bush, that the whole drive was really rather civilised. There was none of the chaos you sometimes hear about on long-distance African routes, no goats wandering blindly into the road and no police checkpoints demanding bribes, just a long, scenic descent through proper hill country with views out across the valley that would have given the Lake District a run for its money on a clear day. Malawi is sometimes nicknamed “the warm heart of Africa,” and within the first hour of driving ourselves about the place we could already see why that label has stuck. Everyone we passed on the way, whether on foot, on a bicycle laden down with charcoal sacks, or sitting outside a roadside stall, gave us a wave or a smile, which after a month of being chauffeured felt like a proper introduction to the country rather than a guided tour past it. By the time the escarpment flattened out and the road levelled off towards the lower Shire Valley, we’d both relaxed considerably, and any nerves about navigating Africa under our own steam had pretty much evaporated.
🦁 The Remarkable Story Behind Majete
The Majete Reserve is run by African Parks, the non-profit conservation outfit that took the place on back when it was in an absolutely dire state. We later learned the full scale of just how dire. Majete had originally been gazetted as a protected area back in 1955, but by the late 1970s and right through the 1980s the place had been hammered by poaching, illegal logging and charcoal burning, to the point where the rhino population was wiped out entirely and the last of the resident elephants was shot dead by poachers in 1992. By the early 2000s, not a single tourist was bothering to visit, and the reserve had become little more than a financial drain on the Malawian government, offering nothing of value to the surrounding communities either. It was, in short, a wildlife sanctuary in name only. Then, in March 2003, African Parks signed a twenty-five-year public-private partnership with the Malawi Department of National Parks and Wildlife, and the whole place was transformed. They built a 142-kilometre electrified perimeter fence to keep the poachers out and the animals in, laid down some 300 kilometres of new roads, set up ranger camps, water holes and a proper tourism infrastructure, and trained up a professional team of rangers from a starting point of just twelve staff to well over a hundred and forty today. Then came the really exciting bit: the restocking. Black rhino arrived first in 2003, a herd of seventy elephants followed in 2006 with more in 2008 and 2009, lions were brought back in 2012 making Majete the only Big Five reserve in the whole of Malawi, giraffe turned up in 2018, cheetah between 2019 and 2021, and African wild dog, after a sixty-year absence from the entire country, returned in 2021. All told, something like three thousand animals across seventeen different species have been reintroduced, and not a single rhino or elephant has been lost to poaching since they came back, which is no small achievement. Today there are healthy, thriving populations of antelope, elephant, giraffe and lion roaming about, and you stand a very good chance of seeing rhino, zebra, leopard, cheetah and African wild dog as well, which for a couple of keen wildlife spotters like us was rather thrilling to contemplate.
🏕️ A Warm Welcome at Thawale Tented Camp
We were staying at Thawale Tented Camp, and we were given an absolutely lovely welcome by Jen, the camp manager, who greeted us with hot towels to wipe away the dust of the journey and a delicious fruit drink that went down rather well after the drive. Thawale, for the record, is one of only two proper lodges inside the reserve, the other being the rather more upmarket Mkulumadzi down on the banks of the Shire River, and Thawale itself sits right on the edge of a pristine waterhole that draws in all sorts of wildlife throughout the day, including a family of elephants that apparently treat the place as something of a regular watering hole. The whole property is unfenced too, which gives you a proper sense of being out in the wild rather than tucked away behind some sort of safety barrier, which I rather appreciated even if Karen wasn’t entirely convinced it was a selling point. Whilst we were sitting there getting our briefing, a large male elephant wandered up to the water hole right next to the main lodge building and began spraying himself with water in the most charming fashion imaginable, flapping his ears about and generally having a thoroughly good time of it. It really was a very cute display, and as far as welcomes go it was about as good as we could have hoped for, certainly better than anything you’d get checking into a Travelodge off the M25, where the closest you’d get to a water feature is a leaky tap in reception. Once the briefing was done, we were shown to our tent, which turned out to be lovely indeed, one of just six available at Thawale, four twins and two doubles, all looking straight out onto the waterhole, with a marvellous view and very well equipped to boot, with proper beds, a decent bathroom and everything else two weary travellers could possibly need after a morning on the road.
🚙 Our First Evening Game Drive
At four o’clock we met up at the vehicle for our evening game drive, and the game drive vehicle itself was an open-sided Land Cruiser, which I was rather excited to try out properly for the first time, having spent the previous month being shuttled about in rather more enclosed minibuses elsewhere on our travels. There’s something genuinely thrilling about sitting up high with nothing between you and the bush but fresh air, even if it does mean you end up eating a fair amount of dust along the way. We shared the ride with three other guests, an older gentleman and two ladies, and off we set into the bush, our driver explaining as we went that Majete covers some seven hundred square kilometres of granite hills, grassy plains and what’s known locally as miombo woodland, a type of tree-cover you find right across this part of southern Africa. The park at Majete is covered in pretty dense undergrowth, which is splendid news for the animals living there but makes spotting them a bit trickier for us lot in the back of the vehicle, craning our necks and squinting into the thicket like a couple of pensioners trying to read the small print without their glasses. Even so, we managed to see plenty of antelope, including impala, waterbuck and nyala, the last of which we hadn’t come across anywhere else on our travels through Africa and which turned out to be one of our favourite new discoveries of the whole trip. The weather wasn’t perfect that afternoon, and the light started dropping away rather quickly, but not before we got the chance to see a group of ten Thornicroft giraffe, a particular subspecies we hadn’t encountered before on any of our previous safari drives and which our driver was clearly rather proud to point out. Part of the plan for the afternoon was to stop for a sundowner and a snack, so we pulled up at a beach along the Shire River, which the locals pronounce ‘she-lay’ and which, I’ll admit, put me straight in mind of the Hobbit, though there wasn’t a hobbit in sight, nor indeed a single elf, dwarf or wizard, much to my disappointment. The Shire is a wide, fast-flowing river and a tributary of the mighty Zambezi, one of Africa’s great waterways, and sitting in it that evening was a solitary hippo who seemed perfectly content with his own company, much like a grumpy old man at the end of a bar. Darkness falls quickly in this part of the world, particularly on a cloudy day like the one we’d had, but it’s also rather a good time for spotting animals, so on the drive back to the lodge our driver used a torch to sweep the bush as we went. We came across a couple of elephants busy rearranging the local landscaping, as elephants do, being the destructive creatures they sometimes are when the mood takes them, and we also spotted a genet, which for those who don’t know, as we certainly didn’t before this trip, is a small nocturnal member of the cat family with a long spotted body and an even longer tail. By the time we got back it was just about time for dinner, which suited us fine after a long and satisfying afternoon out in the bush, and we tucked in feeling thoroughly pleased with our first proper taste of Majete.
🐒 Baboons, Wild Dogs and a Litter of Pups
The following morning we set out full of hope for a great session of animal viewing, and we weren’t disappointed in the slightest, even after a slightly bleary start since none of us are quite as young as we’d like to think we are when it comes to getting up before dawn. One of the first things we came across was a group of baboons, including a mother carrying her baby clinging tightly to her underside, which was an extremely cute sight to behold and one of those moments that makes the early start entirely worthwhile. The baboons at Majete are the olive-coloured variety, which are noticeably more slender and delicate looking than the darker, chunkier baboons we’d seen elsewhere on our travels through East Africa, and a good deal more photogenic with it, all long limbs and rather elegant faces compared to their bulkier cousins further north. Moving on, we headed for the airstrip, the same one we’d visited the day before and where we’d already seen some antelope and a few interesting baboons going about their business, since the open ground around the runway tends to draw a fair crowd of wildlife. As we drove down the strip this time, our driver spotted the pack of African Wild Dogs gathered at the far end, so off we went to see if we could get a bit closer, our cameras already half raised before we’d even properly stopped. These dogs had only been introduced to Majete in fairly recent years, part of that wider reintroduction effort that has brought so many species back to the reserve after their sixty-year absence from the country altogether, but in the last three months they had produced a litter of eight pups, bringing the total pack size up to fourteen, which is a proper success story by any measure. The dogs are naturally nervous of people, so we didn’t get to watch them for very long, but we were told we were only the second group of visitors to lay eyes on the new pups, which felt like rather a privilege, the sort of thing you can’t really put a price on. What a way to start the day! The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful by comparison, though we did get to see some zebra grazing quietly off in the distance, and the hippo from the night before was still in the river, considerably more animated this time round than he had been the previous evening, splashing about like a child in a paddling pool. On the way back to the lodge we passed along the road where we’d seen the elephants the night before. They had moved on by now, off to whichever corner of the reserve takes their fancy, but not before pulling a tree clean down across the road, so our driver had to take us on a little off-road detour through the bush to get round the fallen trunk. Those naughty elephants indeed, leaving their mess for someone else to drive around, much like teenagers leaving washing-up in the sink! It struck me, watching our driver navigate carefully around the splintered branches, that this sort of casual destruction is exactly the reason elephants are sometimes called nature’s bulldozers, knocking over mature trees as easily as I might knock over a garden gnome after one too many sherries, and yet that same destructive habit plays a genuinely useful role in shaping the woodland and opening up clearings for smaller plants and grazing animals further down the food chain.
🐆 An Unforgettable Encounter with a Cheetah
For the evening game drive we decided to sit in the back seats of the Land Cruiser, partly for a change of view and partly because Karen insisted she could see better from there, and for a good long while things were rather quiet on the animal-spotting front, the kind of lull that makes you start wondering if you’ve used up all your luck for the day already. We took one of the loop roads and came across a Ranger vehicle pulled up at the side of the road, which is always a promising sign on a game drive. As we approached, a middle-aged white man emerged from the bush and asked if we’d like to see a cheetah up close. It was something of a silly question to ask two wildlife enthusiasts like us, rather like asking a Londoner if he fancies a pint after a long week! He said it was perfectly fine to leave our vehicle and follow him, so naturally we did, scrambling out with rather more enthusiasm than dignity. This chap, a South African by the name of John, runs the park on behalf of African Parks, and he led us over to where his daughter was standing close to a young cheetah that had just gorged itself thoroughly on a large male impala, the remains of which were scattered about rather grimly nearby. This particular cheetah is one of only a handful that roam the reserve, part of the small founder population reintroduced between 2019 and 2021 after the species had been entirely absent from Majete for decades, a proper rarity that made the encounter feel all the more special. The cheetah had two siblings from the same litter, one of which had been killed by lions, who are notoriously unwilling to share their territory with other predators and will kill them given half the chance, professional jealousy of the highest order if you ask me, and the other had died in circumstances nobody was quite sure of, which John seemed genuinely sad about when he mentioned it. The team had had to help this surviving cheetah adapt to its new home in Majete, including providing it with fresh carcasses while it found its feet in unfamiliar territory, but it had since managed four kills entirely on its own, so they were hopeful it had finally turned the corner and could look after itself properly from here on in. The cheetah was fitted with a tracking collar that communicates with a satellite and also carries a VHF transmitter, allowing the rangers to locate it relatively easily across the reserve’s considerable seven hundred square kilometre expanse, which is no small task when you think about it. John also showed us, via an app on his mobile phone, how he could track the cheetah along with the lions, the wild dogs and the rhinos, all dotted about on a little digital map, which got the Israeli ladies in our group rather excited, as they seemed to think we might use the app ourselves to go hunting for animals on our own steam. John gently explained, with the patience of a man who has clearly answered this question many times before, that the satellite data only came through twice a day, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon, so it wasn’t really suited to real-time tracking, much to their disappointment. Anyway, back to the cheetah itself! It was around three years old and a fine, large specimen of its kind, sleek and powerfully built even whilst lying about half-asleep in the dust. We were able to get to within about ten feet of it, since it had grown rather accustomed to people over time, though it remained, very much, a wild animal that simply tolerated our presence rather than welcoming it with open paws. Having gorged itself on the impala, it spent much of the time rolling about on the ground to help things digest, rather like my own father after Sunday lunch, which was rather entertaining to watch from such close quarters. For a full twenty minutes we were able to put questions to John about the cheetah and about the wider conservation work going on at Majete, and he recommended we track down a documentary on the reserve made by National Geographic, which apparently charts the whole remarkable recovery story in proper detail and is well worth a watch once you’re back home with your feet up. Karen, meanwhile, was far more interested in finding out about John’s daughter, Louise, and managed, as she so often does, to extract the girl’s entire life story within minutes flat, while I stuck to asking sensible questions about the animals and the running of the park. It’s a skill of hers I’ve never quite managed to replicate myself, this knack for getting total strangers to open up about their lives within minutes of meeting them, school, university plans, what her father thought of life out here running a reserve in the middle of nowhere, the lot, while I stood there nodding along occasionally and feeling rather useless by comparison, more interested in the spotted cat snoozing a few feet away than in anyone’s life story, my own included.
🦁 Lions Roaring in the Dark
Sadly, the time came to say our goodbyes to the cheetah, and John and Louise needed to head home to get their dinner started, family life waiting for nobody, not even out here in the bush. We drove a little further down the road and pulled over for our own sundowners and snacks, finding a decent spot with a view out over the valley as the sun started to dip. It was a chilly evening, rather more so than we’d expected given how warm the days had been, so rather than cocktails we’d brought along a flask of rooibos tea instead, which felt like the sensible English thing to do even several thousand miles from home. Just as we’d poured the tea, our driver received a call over the radio from John, saying there were lions out on the road only a short distance from where we were parked. The tea went straight back into the flask in a flash, lids on, snacks abandoned, and off we sped, rather faster than the rangers probably recommend for a game drive vehicle. Five minutes later we caught up with John and Louise, and about fifty yards ahead of where they’d stopped was a large male lion standing right in the middle of the road, magnificent and utterly unbothered by our presence, with a second, slightly smaller male positioned just behind him at the roadside, keeping a watchful eye on proceedings. We pulled up alongside John’s truck, and he asked if we’d like to hear the lions sing, before pulling out his mobile phone and playing a recording of lions calling to one another, a clever bit of ranger trickery if ever I saw one. A minute or two later the large male in the road began to stir, got to his feet and started roaring properly, a sound so loud it genuinely reverberated through our chests like a bass speaker turned up far too high at a wedding disco; it was unlike anything we’d ever experienced before in our lives. It really was quite something, the sort of moment you remember for years afterwards. He then began marking his territory against a bush, which shook violently under the force of it as he continued calling out, warding off these entirely imaginary rival lions who existed only on John’s mobile phone, before wandering directly towards our vehicle with that unhurried confidence only an apex predator can really pull off. I’ll admit I had a brief moment of concern that he might decide to hop straight into the back of the Land Cruiser with us, given there was nothing whatsoever stopping him, but he simply walked on past as if we weren’t there at all. John and Louise headed off for their dinner while we moved further up the road to see the second male lion. We pulled up right alongside him, no more than ten feet away, close enough to count his whiskers, and although it was dark by now, our driver used his torch to light him up properly. The other male was still calling away in the distance, so this one joined in, and the noise was every bit as loud and impressive as before, filling the whole valley it seemed. In between bouts of roaring, he set about cleaning his paws with his tongue, looking for all the world like an enormous house cat having a wash after a long day, the king of the jungle reduced, briefly, to something rather more domestic. After about thirty minutes we reluctantly had to leave him to it and head back to the lodge for our own dinner, buzzing with adrenaline the whole way back. I don’t think either of us said very much on that drive, partly because we were both still trying to process what we’d just witnessed, and partly because every time one of us tried to speak the other simply said “did you hear that roar though” and the conversation looped right back round to where it had started. We’ve seen plenty of remarkable things on our travels over the years, but I’d put that particular evening, two lions calling to each other in the pitch dark with us sat just feet away in an open vehicle, very near the top of the list, and I suspect it’ll be one of those memories that sticks around long after the holiday photos have faded from view.
🐕 A Dawn Visit from the Wild Dogs
Before we left Majete we had one final early-morning game drive planned, so it was an early start and a last bit of packing to finish off, the sort of grim alarm-clock business that none of us truly enjoy on holiday but always feel was worth it afterwards. Karen went off to rinse out the flask we’d used the night before over at the main lodge, while I was still busy sorting out our bags, wondering, as I always do, how we’d managed to acquire so much more luggage than we’d set off with. I heard a commotion outside and went to investigate, and to my great surprise saw the adult African Wild Dogs gathered close to the waterhole right by the lodge itself, bold as you like, wandering about as though they owned the place, which in fairness they probably do. I grabbed my camera and dashed outside in something less than full safari attire, but they didn’t hang about long enough for me to get any decent photographs before disappearing into the bush behind some of the other guest tents, leaving me rather red-faced and empty-handed. The dogs began making their calls, which are genuinely rather frightening sounds when you’re standing close by, a kind of high-pitched twittering that doesn’t sound remotely like you’d expect from a pack of wild predators, and an adult kudu antelope suddenly burst through the bushes with one of the dogs in hot pursuit, sending the whole camp briefly into a flurry of excitement. The dog got nowhere near catching the kudu and quietly slunk back off into the undergrowth, looking rather sheepish about the whole affair, like a dog that’s just been caught chasing next door’s cat. What an extraordinary way to start the morning, and certainly more excitement than I’m used to getting before my first cup of tea!
🦌 Sable, Kudu and a Final Morning of Birdlife
We all gathered back at the Land Cruiser for our last morning game drive, with Karen and myself reclaiming our favourite spot up front. It turned into a properly interesting drive, and we got to see eland, more elephants, and for the very first time both sable and kudu antelope, two species that had eluded us up to that point. The light, for once, was absolutely perfect for photography, the first time it had really come together for us during our stay at Majete, and we made the most of it with some cracking sightings of birdlife, including vultures already hard at work on the impala carcass the cheetah had left behind, red-headed weaver birds busy constructing their nests, crowned hornbills going about their business and a handful of bee-eaters darting about the place. Everyone in the vehicle was thoroughly happy by the time we rolled back in for breakfast, bringing a marvellous stay at this remarkable reserve to a close.
About Majete Wildlife Reserve
Majete was once a prolific wildlife refuge but by the late 1990’s most species of large game, including elephants, had been eradicated. Remnant populations of a few resilient species remained but they had been reduced to very low, and in some cases critical numbers. Law enforcement teams were ill-equipped and underfunded, illegal encroachment, agriculture and hardwood logging were all occurring inside the reserve and the resource was diminishing. In 2003, African Parks Majete (APM) a non-profit organisation, in partnership with the Malawian government and local communities, took total responsibility for the rehabilitation and long-term management of the reserve. The restoration of Majete since then has included significant infrastructure development (142km of electrified perimeter fence, 300km of roads, water holes, scout camps, fence camps and complete tourism infrastructure), wildlife restocking and a complete overhaul of the law enforcement and scientific monitoring function.
The mass translocation of wildlife began in 2003 and by March 2012, 2,559 animals from fourteen different species had been reintroduced including the famed African ‘Big Five’: leopard, elephant, buffalo, black rhino and lion. Other mammals reintroduced were eland, sable, waterbuck, nyala, hartebeest, impala, zebra, warthog and bush pig and in late 2018, Majete received its first-ever population of giraffe (thirteen in total). The introduced animals have been thriving and breeding well and current estimates put the total population of mammals over 11,000.
Planning your visit to Majete
| 📍 Location | 🕖 Opening Times / 🌐 Website |
|---|---|
| Lower Shire Valley, south-western Malawi, approx. 70km (1.5 hrs) from Blantyre | Daily, 6:00 AM – 6:00 PM / visitmajete.org |
| 📞 Phone / 📧 Email | 🚗 Access |
|---|---|
| +265 999 521741 / [email protected] | Accessible by vehicle year-round; 4×4 recommended in wet season (Nov–Mar) |
| ℹ️ Notes | 🎟️ Entry Fees |
|---|---|
| Malaria area – take precautions; bottled water available; charter flights land on Majete’s own airstrip | Non-resident: ~USD 20/person/day · Resident foreigner: ~USD 7/person/day · Malawi citizen: ~MWK 450/person/day · Under 12s: Free |
🚗 Getting There
By road from Blantyre: Take the M1 south towards Chikwawa, then follow signposted turns to the reserve’s main gate (approx. 1.5 hours’ drive).
By air: Charter flights can land directly on Majete’s own private airstrip.
From abroad: Fly into Blantyre’s Chileka International Airport, then transfer by road; some lodges (e.g., Mkulumadzi) arrange transfers.
Best time to visit Malawi
🌤️ Cool and Dry Season (May to August)
This is the most pleasant time to visit Malawi, with sunny days, clear skies and little to no rain. The landscape stays green into May before drying out, and evenings turn properly cold, especially in the highlands and on the Nyika Plateau, where frost is possible. Game viewing improves steadily from June onwards as animals begin gathering near water.
What to pack: layered clothing for warm days and cold nights, a warm fleece or jacket for early morning game drives, a hat and gloves for Nyika, comfortable walking shoes, sun protection and a torch for chilly evenings.
☀️ Hot and Dry Season (September to October)
The bush is now fully dried out and vegetation is thin, making this the best period for spotting wildlife as animals cluster around permanent water sources. October is the hottest and most dramatic month for safaris, right before the rains return. This is also high season, so popular parks are busier and rates rise.
What to pack: lightweight, breathable clothing in neutral colours, a wide-brimmed hat, strong sun cream, plenty of water, sunglasses and a light layer for cool early mornings.
🌧️ Hot and Wet Season (November to March)
Heavy rain, humidity and dramatic thunderstorms define this season, with the heaviest downpours from December to February. Many lakeshore lodges close, and roads can flood, making travel harder. On the upside, the landscape turns lush and vivid, and this is the best period for birdwatching, with many migrant species present.
What to pack: a waterproof jacket and dry bag, quick-drying clothing, sturdy waterproof footwear, insect repellent, a power bank for possible outages and a flexible itinerary.
🌿 Shoulder Season (April)
April bridges the rains and the dry season. Storms ease, temperatures stabilise, and lake lodges begin reopening after the wet months. The scenery is at its greenest and most vibrant, crowds are thinner, and accommodation deals are often easy to find.
What to pack: a light rain jacket, breathable daywear, a warmer layer for evenings, comfortable walking shoes for damp trails and a camera for the lush scenery.
Overall Best Time to Visit
Taking everything into account, May to October is the overall best time to visit Malawi, offering dry weather, comfortable temperatures and strong wildlife viewing throughout. Within that window, July and August are the most reliable months, combining mild conditions, minimal rain and easy road access. Those chasing peak safari drama should aim for September or October, while travellers wanting greener scenery, fewer crowds and better value should consider April or May. Whatever the season, Malawi offers something distinctive, from dramatic storms and blooming orchids in the wet months to clear lake waters and thriving wildlife in the dry ones.
Malawi – Month-by-Month
Visiting Malawi December to March
These are the wettest months, characterized by torrential downpours in the afternoon. Afternoon temperatures are around 29°C/84°F and the humidity is high.
Visiting Malawi in April
Rain is dwindling and so are the temperatures. Daytime temperatures still reach 27°C/81°F but evenings and early mornings can be chilly.
Visiting Malawi in May
This is the end of summer and the rain has stopped. Temperatures are relatively cool, typically 16°C/61°F in the morning and 26°C/79°F in the afternoon. Nighttime temperatures start to drop.
Visiting Malawi in June – August
The average morning temperature is 14°C/57°F. Bring warm clothing for the cold morning game drives in open vehicles. Afternoons will be more pleasant, with temperatures around 25°C/77°F. Nyika Plateau with its high altitude is much colder.
Visiting Malawi in September & October
he heat gradually builds, and the first rains bring relief from very dry conditions. Daytime temperatures will be around 29°C/84°F in September and 31°C/88°F in October, the latter being the hottest month. Peak temperatures can be much higher.
Visiting Malawi in November
This month is unpredictable – the rain starts in the afternoons. Temperatures are between 20°C/68°F in the morning and 31°C/88°F in the afternoon.
Thwale Camp
There are two lodges inside Majete Wildlife Reserve, Mkalumadzi Lodge and Thwale Tented Lodge. We stayed at Thwale which is set on the edge of a pristine waterhole that regularly attracts a wide variety of wildlife, including a family of elephants that often frequent the area. Within the reserve boundaries, the lodge is completely unfenced to give guests a unique experience in the natural surroundings. There are six tented chalets available – four twins, and two doubles – that look out onto the waterhole. The common areas consist of a central dining and restaurant lapa as well as a birding platform.
Thawale is a family-friendly property and a very accessible safari stop. For families, a purpose-built chalet is available, which includes two en-suite bedrooms, a lounge, and veranda. The lodge does not accommodate children 3 and under.
More to Explore
