zimbabwe: walking with elephants

Closer than most people expect, and not as close as some photographs suggest.

Mana Pools is one of the few national parks in Africa where you go among dangerous big game on foot, always with a licensed professional guide. Many of the old bulls simply carry on feeding as a guide brings you quietly in from downwind.

The park's own code sets the limits:

• No nearer than 30 metres to elephants, lions or painted dogs
• Animals always have right of way
• Never more than twelve people on foot at one sighting

Thirty metres from a bull elephant, with no vehicle around you, feels very near indeed. From about August some bulls rise onto their hind legs to reach the winterthorn pods, which is the sight everyone hopes for and nobody can order up.

Your part is simple: stay behind the guide, keep quiet and do as you are asked.

Mana Pools is a stronghold for them and sightings there are regular, but with wild dogs nothing can be counted on.

The packs on this floodplain were the subject of the BBC's Dynasties film on painted wolves, first shown in 2018 and narrated by David Attenborough, which is a fair measure of how closely these particular families have been followed.

Two things help. The floodplain is open, so once dogs are found you can watch them on foot and at their own level. And your dates matter: Zimbabwe's packs usually den in May or June, and a pack with pups stays tied to that den for ten to fourteen weeks instead of roaming.

At other times the same pack can cover 30 kilometres in a day. Hwange's Robins country records wild dog too, a second and slimmer chance later in the trip.

Older teenagers, yes. Young children, not as the route is written.

The suites on the private island at the Falls are adults only, so a family would start at a lodge on the mainland instead, which is an easy change. After that the limits come from the walking.

Little Vundu takes no children under six, asks families with under twelves to book a private vehicle, and allows walking and canoeing from ten at the guide's discretion. Hwange Bush Camp welcomes children over eight but sets twelve as the age for walking safaris, again at the guide's discretion.

Since both camps are built around being on foot, we would suggest this route from about twelve at the youngest. At Matobo, rhino tracking suits older children and teenagers who can walk quietly and follow instructions.

Send us the children's ages with your enquiry and we will check every camp's current policy, Bumi Hills included.

White rhino above all, and they are the reason to come.

We rate Matobo one of the best places in Zimbabwe to see them, and here you do it on foot.

Be realistic about the other two animals people ask about. Black rhino live in these hills but are rated rare. Leopard are reputed to reach a very high density among the granite, yet they are secretive and seldom show themselves.

What fills the rest of your two days is the land and its past. The hills hold more than 3,000 registered rock art sites, and the lodge's guides take you into painted caves. Cecil Rhodes's grave is cut into the granite summit of Malindidzimu, the hill known as World's View.

And because no lion or elephant live here, walking is relaxed in a way it cannot be at Mana Pools or Hwange.

May to November only. Two of the camps are canvas put up for the season and taken down again for the rains, which pins the whole route inside the dry half of the year.

For a route that is mostly on foot we would pick July, August or September, which score top marks on our own pages for all five stops: mornings cold enough for gloves, days warm and dry, and grass low enough to see what you are walking towards.

October is a real choice and not a mistake. It brings the greatest numbers to the river and the pans, and it is also when Mana Pools easily tops 40 degrees, so expect very early starts and long rests in the shade.

June is cool and quiet, with Hwange's herds still building. The edge months, May and November, trade animals spread thinly across green country for walking you have almost to yourselves, with the first storms and their birds in November.

As much or as little as you like.

Nothing on this route is a march. The walks are about tracks and detail, not distance, and at both walking camps the plan is made around what the animals are doing, so a morning might be a walk, a drive, a canoe or some of each.

At Hwange Bush Camp the days are game drives and walks or a combination of the two, and the aim is the experience and not ticking off every animal. There, the way to see elephants is to sit still beside a pan.

On Lake Kariba much of the watching is done from a boat, and the walks there are optional. The one outing with a fixed purpose is the morning spent tracking rhino in the Matobo Hills. Anyone who would rather drive can do so at every stop.

Underfoot it is level at Mana Pools, stonier and hillier in Hwange, and bare granite at Matobo.