Malawi · Southern Africa
Nyika and the northern highlands.
The Nyika Plateau is high, rolling grassland that looks more like the Scottish Highlands than Africa.
Photo Ismail Abubakar / Unsplash
It is riding, walking and mountain-biking country at over 2,000 metres, with roan, eland and one of the highest leopard densities in central Africa — though seeing them in that terrain is another matter.
It is remote, cold at night, and unlike anywhere else in the region.
How do you get to the Nyika Plateau?
By light aircraft to the airstrip at Chelinda, on the plateau, or by a long day's drive from Lilongwe or Mzuzu on roads that climb steeply at the end.
How big is Nyika National Park?
It is Malawi's largest national park, most of it rolling grassland above 2,000 metres, cut by valleys of evergreen forest. The plateau extends across the border into Zambia.
What can you see on the Nyika Plateau?
Zebra, roan antelope, eland and reedbuck on the open grassland, with leopard in the forest patches and hyena at night. The plateau is also known for its wild flowers, including around two hundred species of orchid.
What is there near Nyika?
Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve, on the Zambian border to the south-west, where elephants and hippos come to the water, and Livingstonia, a mission town founded in the 1890s on the escarpment above Lake Malawi, with views down to the lake.
How long should you spend at Nyika?
Two or three nights, which allows for a walk, a ride or a mountain-bike day and a night drive. It is often combined with the northern shore of Lake Malawi.
What is there to see in Nyika and the northern highlands?
What does Nyika and the northern highlands pair well with?
- Lake MalawiLake Malawi holds more species of fish than any other lake on earth, and the clear water makes them visible from the surface.
- Liwonde and MajeteLiwonde and Majete are the two parks that have been most transformed by reintroduction, and both now hold the Big Five.
- South Luangwa, ZambiaSouth Luangwa is the home of the walking safari and one of the most concentrated wildlife areas in Africa.
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