Long a favorite with its beautiful lake and friendly people, Malawi is a perfect East Africa destination for the independent backpacker. It’s safe, the climate is ideal, the people are warm and welcoming, and the scenery is wonderful.

In addition to the lake there are endless village roads and interesting towns, and plenty of off-the-beaten-track routes to follow. I spent a month in Malawi in June/July and traveled from stem to stern. This is number two in a series of blog posts covering my recent trip to Africa. You can read Post #1, “Zimbabwe”, here.

Malawi – Population: 21.2M |Capital: Lilongwe (pop. 1.4M) | Language: Chichewa, English, Tonga | Currency: Kwacha

Two pals make their way past the He’s Not Here restaurant in Zomba

Driftwood and old trees on Lake Malawi in Monkey Bay

Welcome to Malawi! The locals—especially the kids—are unfailingly warm and friendly, particularly in rural areas. This welcoming committee gathered to greet me just outside the town of Dedza

The dry scrub near the small southern lakeside town of Monkey Bay. For a small country Malawi offers a surprising variety of geography and scenery, from dry & scrubby, to green & jungly, to smooth & hilly

Going nowhere…taking a break in Zomba

Lake Malawi at Chikale Beach

My route through Malawi. I entered from Chipata, Zambia, then traveled south to the Shire Valley, then turned north alongside Lake Malawi, and eventually crossed into Tanzania in the far north

Getting In & Out

I spent a month in Malawi, from June 21 to July 22, and covered the distance from Blantyre in the south, to Karonga in the north. I entered from Chirundu in Zambia. Canadians enter Malawi visa-free, an enormous improvement from their previous much maligned and cumbersome online eVisa program, so I just waltzed in like I owned the place. The border was quiet and orderly and completely problem-free. I left Malawi a month later in the far north when I crossed into Tanzania at the Songwe border crossing. Leaving Malawi, too, was completely trouble-free and painless. It’s much faster and easier entering many African countries these days, mainly due to relaxed visa regimes.

On the Road – Malawi

I planned to visit Malawi the last two times I was in Africa but, for different reasons, I missed it. It was worth the wait. It’s a great country to travel in: safe, attractive, and filled with warm and welcoming people. There is plenty of accommodation, plenty of places to eat, and once you figure out the byzantine rules and tricks surrounding the use of public transportation, it’s possible to get nearly anywhere in the country without your own vehicle.

Malawi is often called “Africa for beginners”, but I think that is a bit of a misnomer. It depends on what you do and how you do it. Certainly compared with Zimbabwe or the Congo, or Nigeria, Malawi offers a smooth and relatively easy introduction to Africa. English is widely spoken, it’s not broiling hot or humid, and it’s cheap. Animal viewing, though less prolific and established than what’s available in the game parks of Kenya and Tanzania, is far more affordable, and the parks are more easily accessed. The people are terrific. It’s very safe.

The old Sitima Inn on the lake near Nkhotakota. Once an institution, the old art-deco building from the early ’60s has seen better days. I didn’t stay here

Used shoes for sale in the Dedza market. The Dedza market is very well-organized and tidy, which I later came to realize is unusual in Malawi

But there’s hardship if you want it, you just have to look a little harder than in some of the other, wilder places in Africa. But only a little harder—Malawi is still Africa. Creature comforts are few and far between outside the cities and main tourism areas. Hygiene leaves a lot to be desired. Many roads and streets are unpaved, dark, and busy with motorbikes. Towns and cities are noisy. Quality health care is generally not available outside of a few places. There aren’t many visitors away from the main tourism hubs, so you’re always the center of attention, whether you want to be or not.

A house in between villages, near Kande Beach

Malawi won its independence from Britain in 1964, when Hastings Banda became the country’s first president. Today ranked 174 of 189 countries on the Human Development Index, Malawi is among the world’s least developed countries. And it’s obvious. There are very few signs of wealth, but plenty of signs of poverty. It’s not dangerous, but many of the towns look rough, with crude wooden buildings and potholed streets and poor infrastructure. There’s a lot of garbage. The water and electricity supplies are wholly unreliable. Around 85% of the population lives in rural areas where infrastructure and amenities are still extremely basic.

The main market in Mzuzu. City life is orderly, but a bit rough and tumble

Ninety-five percent of homes in Malawi still use wood or charcoal for cooking, so there is widespread deforestation, and consequently a lot of washed-out and bare land. Most buildings don’t have running water, so people tote jugs and buckets and jerry cans of water seemingly all day, every day. You rarely find anything of high quality, modern, fancy or well-designed. Many houses are cobbled together with worn planks, plywood, and bits of cast-off wood. The vast majority of the shops stick to selling essential items—groceries, cooking gas, clothing, hardware, pharmacies, medical services. You don’t see many things that aren’t necessary for daily life: maternity clothes, used records, outdoor gear, book stores, wellness centers, craft stores, collectables.

The villages and rural areas of Malawi are spectacular, but the towns are usually mucky and unkempt, as here in Karonga

Platforms for market sellers. You don’t find a lot of fancy or modern items in Malawi

Poverty doesn’t just equate to a lack of things, it also predicts poor health. HIV/AIDS, diarrhoeal diseases, diabetes, tuberculosis and malaria—all things wealthier countries have essentially eradicated, or routinely treat—are still leading causes of death in Malawi. The average life expectancy is 62.5 years. (in Canada it’s 81.3; in the U.S.A, 77.4; in the UK, 82.1).

Despite all that, people seem remarkably cheerful and positive. You hear a lot of laughter and music and joking and chatting, and you see kids running and playing ball & stick games, friends walking arm-in-arm. People seem to have time for each other; little is rushed or frenetic. I can’t tell for sure as an outsider, but I had the idea that Malawi has been much the way it is now for a long time, so people are used to it; numb, resigned, stoic. Don’t get me wrong: there are some nice homes and buildings, and there are some attractive civic spaces, and some lovely residential neighborhoods with pretty, paved streets and modern homes, but, based on what I saw, they’re few and far between.

A woman stands in front of the Al-Falah mosque in the capital, Lilongwe. 14% of the population of Malawi identifies as Muslim

The Lilongwe central market spills out of its buildings into the nearby streets

A man transforms a tree into a pirogue (dugout canoe) in a village outside the town of Nkhotakota. I was invited to take a few whacks at it—it was hard going!

Dusk in Mangochi. Early evening in the small towns and villages is magical. Many buildings don’t have electricity (or the electricity grid has failed), so you’re left just with natural light, which is exotic and gentle and soothing

Uncle Joe is keeping the good people of Salima clipped, charged, and burned

Malawi the Beautiful

Malawi is a real stunner. The cities and larger towns are a mess—chaotic, garbage-strewn and noisy for the most part (Zomba and Blantyre are notable exceptions)—but the small towns, villages and rural areas are spectacular, with their tidy, swept dirt yards and lazy, bucolic little gardens and shady trees. Despite problems with deforestation, there’s still a lot of green, mainly because of the moderate temperatures and heavy seasonal rainfall. The villages near Lake Malawi are especially attractive.

A swamp near Liwonde National Park. The only “African” wildlife I saw was here: the bum of a retreating hippo, and a distant elephant

Carting a load of firewood down from the Zomba Plateau, outside the town of Zomba. I spent a long day walking up and back down the plateau

A lazy walk in the early evening through the dusty streets of Mangochi. Main streets of towns are usually paved, but rarely the side streets

The reservoir of the Mulunguzi Dam on the Zomba Plateau. I hiked up a series of hills to find this view

On the road up to the Zomba Plateau

A man zips by on his way into Zomba town

My Favorite Things

It’s very cliché, and it’s what everyone else says, but the people really make Malawi. They’re terrific, warm and friendly, chatty and easy to please (everyone except the drivers—more on that later). I found them slightly timid and deferential—to me, but also to each other. I rarely witnessed arguments or noticed loud, boisterous behavior. English is widely spoken which makes it easy to strike up conversations with pretty much anyone. Malawians have a jaunty way of speaking English, and are very expressive. They take time to talk to visitors who take time to talk with them.

Security guard at the bank, Lilongwe

A junior citizen of Dedza, a small market town near the border with Mozambique

Emerson making red velvet flip-flops from old tires in Karonga

Lake Malawi is spectacular. I expected it to be spectacular, and it really delivered. Imagine an ocean that instead of salty and rough is fresh and calm, and brimming with colourful fish. Lake Malawi is the 4th largest freshwater body in the world and home to more than 1,000 species of fish (and counting), the majority of them cichlids which swim around your feet and arms as you splash your way through the warm water (most of the bright and colourful fish you have in your home aquarium are cichlids). I swam multiple times daily when I was traveling along the lake.

Fishing beach at Monkey Bay. Many of the lakeside villages still support small fishing fleets, mostly motor boats or pirogues (dugout canoes made from a single log, as seen in the photo)

The beach at Kande Beach Resort. “Resort” is a bit generous, but it’s a great place to stay. Long-favored by overland adventure trucks, I met a group of around 10 overlanders the day I arrived, mainly from Australia, the UK and the U.S. They left the next morning and I had the entire place to myself

Loading a boat in Nkhata Bay. Boats like this make regular runs to the nearby lakeside villages and islands

Chilling at Butterfly Space eco-Lodge in Nkhata Bay. I stayed here for three nights and swam 4 or 5 times each day. I met several westerners, most in Malawi for volunteer opportunities

My Less Favorite Things

Transportation. Ugh! Despite its small size, traveling on public transportation as a local is frustrating. Even more so than in Zimbabwe, which is saying something. The roads in Malawi are generally in better condition, which surprised me, and many of the routes are terrifically scenic, but it’s slow going and, at times, exasperating.

Distances between towns are short, so instead of the relatively comfortable intercity buses (coaches) you find in neighboring countries, local traffic instead consists mainly of minibuses and the dreaded “taxi”, which is simply someone’s car used as a shared vehicle, totally unregistered and unregulated. And can they cram them in, wow! Small hatchback-type cars routinely take eight, nine, or even ten 10 people. Four or five people in the front seat is the norm, the driver sitting on one cheek, the rest of him sticking out the window, still driving. The cars are mostly battered and have poor shocks and springs. Roadblocks, police checks and breakdowns are common. People are generally in good spirits, and I had some fun trips, but the novelty definitely wore off.

Packing ’em in! Malawians can really fill a vehicle. These riders are crammed in the backseat of a car designed to carry three

The state of many of the roads in Malawi is atrocious. I hitched a ride in this guy’s truck, which was comfortable but slow going

Luxury! Only four of us in the front seat of this small sedan. Some cars took five!

Interestingly, drivers were the only group of Malawians I had issues with. They frequently lied about their destinations, fares, and connections, and could be quite shirty when questioned. “Non-stop, no waiting! Only 4 people! We will go direct!”, was something I heard many times. And a shrug of the shoulders was normally all I got 10 minutes later when I asked why we’d stopped to wait or pick up additional people. Locals got the same treatment, so I wasn’t too upset, but it was annoying.

Hitchhiking was possible, and I did it a half dozen times or so, but most of the long-haul trucks—where you usually find the most reliable rides— prefer routes through neighboring Zambia where the roads are better and more direct, so in Malawi you have to settle for smaller trucks, NGO or government vehicles (who normally don’t pick up locals but who will pick up white guys standing on the side of the road) and the odd private car. I hitched when I could, but most days when moving from town-to-town I was stuck in the taxis.

My backpack waiting patiently for a ride—hitchhiking near Salima

Captured on the move—hitching a ride in a truck between Mzuzu and Karonga

A compounding problem is an informal “road mafia” that limits zones and districts where a driver can take paying passengers. If your journey from A to B is more than 40 or 50 kilometers, you usually have to do it in stages. Driver 1 takes you the first 10 kilometers, then you have to get out and change to Driver 2 who takes you the next 10, and so on. Each transfer means more waiting and more packing ’em in. It’s a rough business. It was easier to find transportation in Malawi than in Zimbabwe, but what you found was far more uncomfortable and frustrating.

 I hitched a ride in the back of a small pickup carrying wicker furniture (and cabbage) to Salima. A sturdy chair provided a comfy place to sit while I watched the road disappear behind. It was an excellent road, too, and the guy drove like a Formula-One racer. Luxury!

Noise!

When night falls, Malawi gets noisy. Everywhere but in the tiniest villages ear-splitting (bad) music erupts from strained speakers in the bars and makeshift nightclubs when the sun goes down. I learned to choose my hotel carefully, always wandering around the neighborhood first to search for bars. A nearby bar guarantees a sleepless night—for visitors, that is, the locals seem unaware. I asked Malawians about it (Tanzanians too—Tanzania is noisier, amazingly), and they told me no one minds. “It’s just how things are here, we’re used to it,” I was told. Bars and shops and residential houses share the same neighborhoods, so if you live beside a bar you’re fed a consistent diet of loud music nearly daily until 2:00, 3:00, and even 4:00 a.m. They say people quickly become used to a noise, living beside a railway station or airport, for instance. I guess it’s the same in Malawi with the bars. But I sure didn’t get used to it.

A noisy bar in Zomba. This one actually wasn’t too bad—most bars play ear-splitting music of questionable quality until early the next morning, regardless of what sort of neighborhood they’re in

Kids

As I’ve already mentioned, the people are wonderful and go a long way to making Malawi the terrific place that it is. Children are especially jolly. Everywhere I went, particularly in the villages, I was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm and shouts of, “Mzungu, mzungu, mzungu!!” (Mzungu means white person; I was occasionally called “Brother Mzungu”). Kids loved having their photo taken, and they loved gathering around my phone to giggle at the images. Very few people in Malawi have smartphones—and none of the children do— so there was no way of sharing the photos, but it didn’t stop anyone from posing and enjoying the experience.

Brothers—one snotty-nosed—somewhere on the road near Mangochi

A welcoming committee quickly assembling in the small lakeside village of Kasankha, near Monkey Bay

I came across a small school on my walk from Zomba town up to the plateau. The teacher emptied the entire school to get the kids to pose for the photo!

Three girls clowning around in the market in Dedza

Village kids on the small road between Liwonde town and the national park

Kids outside Karonga

It was interesting to see kids playing the “old-fashioned” way. Village life in Malawi is still very basic, so kids entertain themselves rolling old bicycle tires, or pushing small homemade wooden go-karts, or playing soccer with homemade balls, or simply running and chasing each other. Child mortality rates are very high in Malawi, but the kids you see in the villages all broadcast glowing fitness and are extremely cheerful and boisterous. It was really terrific interacting with the children in Malawi.

One of the many, many little groups of villagers who came out to see me as I walked by. These ones are on a small road outside of Liwonde

Accommodation

Malawi offers excellent value for lodging. I had no problem finding basic clean, tidy, bright and safe rooms for between $7 and $15. Breakfast was sometimes included. Old mattresses with terrific dips and wows in the center were the norm, and the plumbing frequently left something to be desired, but I encountered no problems with excessive bugs or dirt, and had no trouble keeping clean and rested. Outside of the larger towns and cities there are few options, and there’s rarely anything even remotely fancy, but the basic rooms I found were excellent. Around half of the rooms came with mosquito nets, but they were often full of holes or ill-fitting, so I used my own. I never felt security was a problem, and never had anything stolen from my room.

Hotel booking sites, like Booking.com, are next to useless outside of the two largest cities, so I adopted the “show-up-and-wander-around-till-you-find-something” approach, which was perfectly fine. I was never skunked for lodging.

One of the best places I stayed in Malawi, the Butterfly Space eco-lodge in Nkhata Bay

The friendly and efficient Violet showed me to my room at the KGL Lodge in Lilongwe on the first day I arrived in Malawi

James 23 waiting for customers to buy his fish in the main market in Mzuzu. Mzuzu is an unremarkable place filled with hardware stores and car parts shops

Food and Drink

Alas, local food in Malawi is not much different from food in Zimbabwe or Tanzania or Uganda, which is to say, not good. The same pounded maize (corn) porridge dumpling is the main staple, called nshima in Malawi. Accompanying dishes were very similar: goat, chicken, beef, and a few different sorts of vegetable, usually mustard, rape, spinach or radish. Fish features prominently, but I found most of the fish had too many small bones. In fairness the food was always fresh, and dirt cheap. You could find much better food in the larger cities where there were always a few fancier, “sit down tablecloth” places, pizza and burgers, or Indian food, but otherwise it was all local. I had no stomach or food poisoning problems in Malawi.

Not fancy, but fresh. Two clumps of nshima, mustard greens, beans, and a plate of some sort of chicken stew. Local food in Malawi was never ambitious, but almost always fresh, and cheap

A busy outdoor restaurant in Mangochi. All meals come with nshima, or sometimes rice, and come with two or three sides. Sides include steamed or stewed greens, goat, chicken or stringy beef, and sometimes stews or deep-fried foods. Basic meals at places like this rarely cost more than $3.00, usually much less

A rudimentary lunch kitchen in a neighborhood market in Lilongwe. Basic meals here almost never cost more than one dollar. Hygiene is suspect—it’s best not to look too closely—but luckily I stayed healthy during my stay in Malawi

Produce in Malawi is generally excellent, fresh and extremely cheap. Everything is seasonal; if it’s not in season, you don’t find it

I like a good, plain old honest marketing slogan like this one in Zomba

Mice, one item that mercifully stayed off my snacks list. I saw plenty of other people eating them, though. This guy was selling them in the market in Dedza. Note the little bags of salt and chili you can add for flavor

There’s a much more prevalent and encouraged beer drinking culture in Malawi than in Zimbabwe. It was easy to find bars and watering holes, and because public safety is largely a non-issue (for me, at least, as a man), I was able to spend most evenings enjoying a few cold ones in a bar, watching the world go by or chatting with the locals. One particularly memorable evening was spent in Salima with Baxter, an officer in the Malawian army who was stationed at a nearby base. Over beers (he bought me a beer!) Baxter told me he’d been on many secret missions abroad, where they “targeted miserables”, often in cooperation with armies from the United States and the Vatican!

Beers are mostly all fizzy lagers, with brands dominated by Carlsberg and Castel. Bars have whimsical names, like “Peace and Love Bottle Stop” (Mangochi), and “Abby’s Good and Proper Drinking Bar” (Karonga).

The Peace and Love Bottle Shop bar in Mangochi. I had a few beers here around 7:00 p.m. Around 9:00 p.m. the music starts blaring. Bars are great in Malawi, but you want to take care to choose a hotel far away

A bar looking for customers (I wasn’t one, I just stopped in to buy a bottle of chibuku)

The sorghum beer chibuku that’s popular in Zimbabwe is also popular and easy to find in Malawi. Bottled water and (sweet) juices are also easy to find, and reasonably cheap. There’s not much of a coffee culture in Malawi, though I could usually find someone to serve up a cup of instant coffee, and in a few of the larger towns and some hotels you can find very good, though pricey, coffee. It’s easier to find coffee beans from Malawi in Vancouver.

A much-enjoyed and rare luxury, coffee at the Mandala House Cafe in Blantyre. Managed by an Italian-Canadian couple, the Mandala houses a small restaurant, cafe and the La Caverna art gallery

Supplies I put together for a lunch in Nkhata Bay: peanuts, popcorn, bananas, mandasi (deep-fried chunks of dough), and passion fruit. A bottle of chibuku washed it all down

Costs

Malawi is cheap, and offers excellent value. Transportation is the most expensive outlay, because of relatively high gasoline prices, but food, accommodation, groceries and toiletries are very cheap. There are plenty of options to spend more on safaris, fancier tourist lodges, organized hiking and other guided activities, but simply traveling through as a backpacker and eating and staying local is very easy on the pocketbook. I spent about US$15-20 per day on average, for everything, and was perfectly comfortable, though not particularly well-pampered or well-fed. I hadn’t expected to be.

A few cold ones on a hot evening at the Chatika Liquor Shop bar in Monkey Bay

The Saint Geltrude Comensoli Catholic church on the outskirts of Monkey Bay. Around 83% of Malawians claim to be Christian—18% Catholic, the rest Protestant

A young man reads the Koran in a small mosque in a village outside Nkhotakota. I asked permission to take the photo; he encouraged me to take several, then insisted on choosing the one he liked best (which wasn’t this one, incidentally). 14% of Malawians claim to be Muslim

The Verdict

I would be very happy to visit Malawi again. I had terrific fun and adventure exploring the many small villages and dirt roads that criss-crossed fields and forests, and I loved the lake. For a small country there’s a lot of geographic variety. The people make travel fun and entertaining. Transportation was the only frustration, though it’s hardly a deal-breaker. A lot of travelers drive through Malawi on their way north or south, in vehicles purchased in South Africa or Kenya, which would largely solve the logistical challenges associated with moving around.

But I like to do things on my own, the way locals do them, as I find it gives you a better idea of how a country really ticks; if I keep to that philosophy then unfortunately I’ll be stuck in the same system the next time. It’s a small price to pay, though, for what you get out of the country otherwise.

I told this woman in the Lilongwe that my name is Andy; she seemed worried I was going to try to claim her basket

Blog posts for Tanzania and Uganda should be done and dusted by Christmas, so in the meantime…

…Stay tuned!

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“You should travel to learn about countries and the way normal people live in them, not to see the spectacular things. Buy vegetables, get a haircut, explore a suburb, walk out of town. Don’t look for the special, look for the banal.”