The self-styled Warm Heart of Africa wraps around one immense, glittering lake. Lake Malawi dominates, its clear waters and sandy coves fringed by fishing villages, dive spots and island lodges. Inland, the Shire River threads Liwonde, where elephants and hippos gather, and rewilded reserves now shelter the Big Five. The south rises to the granite massif of Mount Mulanje, while tea estates carpet the Thyolo hills. Friendly, compact and uncrowded, it rewards slow…
"The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind" (2019), directed by and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, tells the true story of William Kamkwamba, the Malawian teen who powered his village with a windmill of bicycle parts.
Lake Malawi holds more fish species than any other lake on Earth — close to a thousand cichlids, nearly all of them endemic.
Cape Maclear and Likoma Island are lived mask-on: freshwater diving here is one of a kind. An eSIM helps: the Ilala ferry runs on stretchy timetables, the Lake of Stars festival (September) is tracked online and kwacha withdrawn in town before the lake.