Known as Africa’s City of Peace, Lusaka is fast emerging as a tourism hub. Interesting cultural experiences, wild encounters and a vibrant nightlife can be found in the Zambian capital, write ANURAG MALLICK and PRIYA GANAPATHY
Sitting around a stone table in a dim-lit grotto with the soft gurgle of an indoor waterfall, we sipped white wine and nibbled on an assorted cheese platter. We were at Kaposhi Dairy in the 10,000-acre Chaminuka Farm on the outskirts of Zambia’s capital Lusaka, where an hour earlier we had petted cheetahs and admired the Chaminuka art collection.
Another night we moved from live jazz at Misty’s to bar-hopping at Chicago and Kegs & Lions, ending at Kalahari where a local band and dancers rocked late into the night and random strangers got on stage to bump and grind for dangerously close face-offs.
Lusaka is one of the fastest developing cities in southern Africa and one can see why. Named after the headman of an erstwhile Lenje village on Manda Hill (manda means graveyard), Lusaka is perched atop a 4,198 feet high limestone plateau that blesses it with great weather.
Its strategic location at the junction of the Great North Road to Tanzania and the Great East Road to Malawi made it the natural choice as capital of the British colony of Northern Rhodesia. A section of the Great North Road was named Cairo Road in memory of British mining magnate and politician Cecil Rhodes’ vision of a road from Cape to Cairo through British colonies in Africa.
In 1950, Ralph Sanders, a colonial civil servant working for the department of Game and Tsetse Control founded a Botanical Garden. He called it Munda Wanga or ‘My Garden’ in the local Nyanja dialect. As a botanist he was responsible for the establishment of many parks, gardens and the beautiful tree-lined avenues in Lusaka. Yet, wherever we drove around, we spotted painted signs of boring and drilling companies from China and India.
For years, European powers vied for control over the mineral-rich Copper Belt to the north. Dubbed as ‘red gold’, copper shaped the country’s infrastructural development, spurred trade unions and birthed Zambian nationalism. They say Zambia was born with a ‘copper spoon in its mouth’. Thanks to the freedom struggle spearheaded by Dr Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia gained independence on 24 December 1964. The international airport named after the first President Kaunda is currently undergoing a major expansion with Chinese collaboration.
We visited Chilenje House No. 394 where Dr Kenneth Kaunda lived between January 1960 and December 1962. From this humble house, he directed Zambia’s freedom struggle, triggering independence movements in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi). House No. 395 contains simple relics and chronicles the history and growth of Lusaka and Zambia’s political development. For more on the country’s history, the National Museum is the perfect resource. As the venue for several historic conventions, Lusaka is often hailed as Africa’s ‘City of Peace’.
The next stop Embassy Park Presidential Memorial is a mausoleum where late Zambian presidents Levy Patrick Mwanawasa (1948–2008), Frederick Chiluba (1943–2011) and Michael Sata (1937–2014) are buried. The US$15 entry fee is steep but includes a guided tour that describes its architectural highlights. Photography of the building across the main road, a former parliament building and now used by the Ministry of Defence, is prohibited. Interestingly, while these gentlemen had died in office, Zambia’s first President is still alive and well.
Lusaka has a vibrant nightlife with several places to wine and dine. The historic Lusaka Golf Club serves excellent steak. Musuku restaurant at Southern Sun Ridgeway dishes out terrific Zambian fare including wild game meat like kudu, croc and impala, as does Chuma Grill at Radisson Blu.
Rembrandt at the Great Best Western offers the local staple nshima (finely ground maize flour porridge) and Zambezi bream, fresh from the river. Taj Pamodzi, where the Indian President Shri Ramnath Kovind had stayed during his recent visit, has a lovely bar called Marula and a rustic open-air restaurant Steaks and Grills rustling up Indian and Zambian grills.
For shopping, head straight to Kabwata Cultural Village, an amorphous open-air market of thatch-roofed huts and makeshift stalls where you can buy stone and wood carvings, baskets, antique masks, drums, colorful clothes and more, directly from the artisans. Also worth a look is the Sunday Craft Market, a weekly affair in the car park of Arcades Shopping Centre on Great East Road.
It’s a great place to strike a bargain with a wide range of colourful handicrafts, wooden bowls, malachite figurines, African prints and masks. For a shopping mall experience, try the massive Manda Hill, East Park or Levy Junction.
Yet, many of Lusaka’s top tourist hotspots are located not within the city but on the outskirts. Set in Lilayi Lodge’s 650-hectare game farm, the Lilayi Elephant Nursery is where orphaned elephants and abandoned calves are nursed before being rehabilitated to a Release Facility at Kafue National Park, 4 hours away. The project manager gave us an overview and showed us the backroom facility where formula milk was prepared for the young pachyderms.
Many calves like Nkala, Rufunsa, Maramba, Zambezi, Mosi-oa-Tunya and Kavalamanja were named after their place of discovery and had been released at Kafue. Each one had a heart-rending story. Musolele was named after the wildlife police officer who died defending his mother from poachers.
Mulisani, literally ‘shepherd’, was named in honour of wildlife conservationist and artist David Shepherd. Njanji means ‘train tracks’ as this elephant was found on the railway line after being darted. In what’s a daily ritual, at 11.30am, we were ushered to a high viewing deck to watch them feed and play.
Soon, it was time for us to forage as well and Lilayi Lodge gave us our best meal in Lusaka – char-grilled rump steak, grilled Zambian crayfish and East African seafood curry. We shuffled heavily back to our vehicle for the hour’s ride to Lusaka. Bent over our padded waistlines, we laboriously packed our souvenirs, noticing how it wasn’t the only excess baggage we carried…
FACT FILE
Getting there
Fly to Lusaka’s Kenneth Kaunda International Airport on Ethiopian Airlines via Addis Ababa, Kenyan Airlines via Nairobi, Oman Air via Muscat or Emirates via Dubai. Lilayi and Chaminuka are on the outskirts of Lusaka, 45 min drive away.
Stay
Southern Sun Ridgeway
Ph +260 211 251 666
www.tsogosun.com
Best Western Plus Lusaka Grand Hotel
Ph +260 21 1239666
www.lusakagrand.co.zm
Protea Hotels by Marriott
Ph +260 21 1254664
https://www.marriott.com
Radisson Blu Hotel
Ph +260 960 280900
www.radissonblu.com
Taj Pamodzi
Ph +260 21 1254455
https://vivanta.tajhotels.com
Nature/Wildlife
Chaminuka
Ph +260 211 254146, 840884
www.chaminuka.com
Lilayi Elephant Nursery & Lodge
Ph +260 211 840435/6, 971 00 2010 http://www.lilayi.com
http://gamerangersinternational.org/
Must Eat
Steaks at Lusaka Golf Club
Zambian cuisine at Musuku, Chuma Grill & Steaks and Grills
Nshima & Zambezi bream at Rembrandt
Fried Chicken at Hungry Lion
Pizza at Debonnairs
Indian food at Bombay Lounge
Buy
Masks, wood & stone carvings Kabwata Cultural Centre
Local crafts at Sunday Market, Arcades car park
Malls like Manda Hill, East Park, Arcades & Levy Junction
Nightspots
Live jazz at Misty
Local Zambian music at Kalahari
Bars like Chicago’s, Keg & Lion and Alpha
Late night at Kabwata
Authors: Anurag Mallick & Priya Ganapathy. This article appeared on 20 Oct 2018 in the Travel supplement of Deccan Herald newspaper.
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