Mfuwe Lodge: Why One of the World's Top-Rated Hotels Is a Safari Lodge in Zambia

In 2025, the readers of Travel + Leisure ranked their hundred favourite hotels on Earth. At No. 3 — ahead of the palace hotels of Europe, the island resorts of the Indian Ocean, and every other safari property in Africa — was an eighteen-chalet lodge on a lagoon in Zambia's South Luangwa National Park. This is the story of why.

Mfuwe Lodge at a Glance

What it is	The flagship lodge of The Bushcamp Company — the most visited safari lodge in the Luangwa Valley, and the No. 3 hotel in the world in Travel + Leisure's 2025 World's Best Awards.
Where	Inside South Luangwa National Park, Zambia — on the Mfuwe Lagoon, minutes beyond the main gate and under an hour from Mfuwe International Airport. One of the few lodges where you stay inside the park itself.
Rooms	18 air-conditioned chalets set between the Mfuwe Lagoon on one side and a wafwa — a dried oxbow — with a busy waterhole on the other, plus a two-bedroom family house. Several chalets have lofts, offering additional accommodation for families — and every room is a short walk from the water.
Spaces	Open lagoon-facing lounge, bar and dining decks, swimming pool, full spa, reliable wifi throughout — and a lobby built around a wild mango tree that elephants walk through every November.
Wildlife in camp	Hippos and crocodiles resident in the lagoon; impala and puku always around camp; elephants near-daily; leopards regular night visitors; buffalo and other game frequent the lodge's waterholes; lions, wild dogs, warthogs, monkeys, baboons and bushbuck in and around camp.
Activities	Day and night game drives, guided walking safaris, bush breakfasts and dinners, photography, community and conservation visits.
Season	Open year-round — including the emerald season, when most of the valley's seasonal camps are closed.
The circuit	The gateway to KuKaya and six intimate bushcamps across a 140,000-acre exclusive wilderness area in the remote southern park — South Luangwa's most complete safari journey.
Pedigree	Operated by The Bushcamp Company, running camps inside South Luangwa for more than 25 years; guest stays have funded over $7 million in conservation and community work.

Every November, elephants walk through the lobby at Mfuwe Lodge. They are not lost. They are following a path their mothers and grandmothers followed, to a wild mango tree that stood on this ground long before the first brick of the lodge was laid. When Mfuwe Lodge was built, it was built around the tree — and so, once a year, the elephants come through reception, because reception is what stands on their way to breakfast.

We begin with the elephants because they answer, better than we ever could, the question of whether this is the right place for a lodge to stand. The elephants settled that question decades ago. A few lines about this lodge have been repeated for years — written long ago, copied from brochure to brochure — and some are no longer true, while others deserve a fuller telling. So here it is, in full.

Is Mfuwe Lodge Inside South Luangwa National Park? Yes — and Here Is What That Changes

You will still find descriptions that place Mfuwe Lodge "just outside" South Luangwa National Park. It is not outside the park and never has been. Mfuwe Lodge stands within the national park itself, between the Mfuwe Lagoon on one side and a wafwa — one of the valley's dried oxbow channels — holding a busy waterhole on the other, a few minutes beyond the main gate — one of the few lodges anywhere in South Luangwa where you sleep, wake, and take every meal inside the park boundary. Most of the lodges in the wider Mfuwe area, including some very good ones, sit outside the boundary along the east bank of the Luangwa River; their guests cross into the park each morning and out again at night. Ours are already home. It is a simple fact of geography, but it changes the whole shape of a day: first light finds you already among the game, and the park does not close behind you at dusk, because you never left it.

Is the Mfuwe Sector of South Luangwa Too Busy?

The Mfuwe sector is the busiest corner of South Luangwa, and we would rather tell you that plainly than write around it. But it is worth understanding why. This sector is not busy the way an airport is busy — it is busy the way a great theatre is busy. The lagoon systems, the ebony groves, and the river bends around Mfuwe hold some of the most reliable concentrations of wildlife in the park, including the leopards that made this valley famous. The roads came to the game, not the other way round; nobody built a network to a mediocre corner of Africa. The visitors who share it come from the many fine camps of this valley — and their presence here is part of why South Luangwa thrives, funding the protection of the whole park.

What living inside the park means, practically, is that our guests experience this famous sector on the friendliest possible terms. The day traffic arrives through the gate in the morning and leaves before it closes. Guests at Mfuwe Lodge are out before it arrives and often still watching a leopard after it has gone — the quietest hours in the busiest sector belong disproportionately to the people who sleep inside it. We will not pretend you will never see another vehicle here; on a good sighting in high season, you will. What we can say honestly is that the sector's reputation for wildlife is deserved, and its reputation for crowds is largely a story about the gate — a thing our guests drive past twice: on the day they arrive, and the day they leave.

How Big Is Mfuwe Lodge?

Mfuwe Lodge has eighteen chalets, plus a two-bedroom family house. In a valley of four- and six-room bushcamps, that has earned it the label "large," and within the family it belongs to, that is fair — our own bushcamps take between six and twelve guests. But hold the lodge to the standard the wider world uses and the word becomes absurd. Travel + Leisure's readers ranked it against hotels many times its size, and it beat nearly all of them. Eighteen rooms is not a large hotel. It is a small lodge that happens to live among tiny ones — and its scale is exactly what allows the things a four-room bushcamp cannot offer: air-conditioned chalets, a two-bedroom family house and loft chalets for families, a swimming pool, a full spa, and doors that stay open through the emerald months when the seasonal camps have closed.

Game Viewing at Mfuwe Lodge: The Safari That Comes to You

Here is the part the old descriptions never seem to mention: at Mfuwe Lodge, you do not have to leave the property to enjoy some of the best game viewing in Zambia. Hippos and crocodiles live in the Mfuwe Lagoon below the deck. Elephants are simply always around — the November lobby procession is only the most famous of their visits. Leopards pass through camp so regularly that the night watchmen greet them like neighbours. Lions have walked between the chalets. Guests at lunch have watched wild dogs take down an impala off the front of the deck. Impala and puku graze around camp at all hours, and buffalo and other game are frequent visitors at the lodge's waterholes. And filling in every quiet corner are the warthogs, monkeys, baboons, and bushbuck — in almost every direction, at almost every hour. The extraordinary truth about this place is how quickly people begin to take it for granted: by the third morning, a bull elephant at the pool is just part of breakfast. There are camps in Africa where you go looking for the wildlife. Mfuwe Lodge is a place where the wildlife also comes looking at you.

Mfuwe Lodge as the First and Last Night of a South Luangwa Safari

All of this makes Mfuwe Lodge something the safari world has surprisingly few of: a genuinely great first and last chapter. Arrive off the flight and within minutes you are inside the park, on the lagoon deck, with a cold drink and a hippo argument below — no better decompression exists. From here the journey deepens, south into the remote camps of the park's wilder reaches — many of them our own six bushcamps, set across a 140,000-acre exclusive wilderness area, alongside other highly regarded camps that make this valley what it is. And when you return from days of walking in country where yours were the only footprints, the lodge is waiting with a long shower, a swim, a spa table, and one last night among the elephants before the flight home. Zambians know this instinctively — Mfuwe Lodge has long been a favourite weekend holiday for families from Lusaka and from neighbouring countries, and locals are the hardest audience in safari to impress.

One of Luangwa's Original Safari Lodges

Mfuwe Lodge is one of Luangwa's original safari lodges. Long before luxury travel became an industry, this was a place where presidents came to stay, conservation projects were conceived, friendships were forged, and generations of guides, researchers, and travelers began their understanding of the valley. Its walls have quietly witnessed much of the modern history of South Luangwa.

There is something about old places that cannot be designed or purchased. They accumulate stories. They develop character. Like the oldest man in the room, they become a little weathered, a little bruised, and immeasurably wiser for it.

Mfuwe Lodge is one of those places. It is more than a gateway to a remarkable wilderness. Over more than half a century, it has become part of the valley itself, holding some of its memory and, perhaps, a little of its magic.

Our responsibility is not to make it something different. It is to care for it well enough that the next generation experiences that same feeling when they walk through the lobby for the very first time. Great safari lodges are never truly finished. They are simply entrusted to the people fortunate enough to look after them for a while.

Third-best hotel in the world is a remarkable thing to be called, and it was not given to this lodge for its location on a map. It was earned — by the guides who have worked this ground for twenty-five years, by the lagoon, by the mango tree, and by thousands of guests who came for a night on the way to somewhere wilder and found the wild had already come to them.

The measure of a safari is not how many animals you saw. It is how deeply you came to know one wild place. At Mfuwe Lodge, the knowing starts before you have unpacked.

Frequently Asked Questions About Mfuwe Lodge

Is Mfuwe Lodge inside South Luangwa National Park?

Yes. Mfuwe Lodge is located inside South Luangwa National Park, a few minutes beyond the main gate, on the Mfuwe Lagoon. It is one of the few lodges in South Luangwa where guests stay within the park boundary itself, rather than crossing in from outside each day.

Why is Mfuwe Lodge rated one of the best hotels in the world?

In Travel + Leisure's 2025 World's Best Awards, readers ranked Mfuwe Lodge the No. 3 hotel in the world — the highest-ranked safari property on the list. The ranking reflects its guiding, its location inside the park, wildlife in camp year-round, and more than 25 years of community and conservation work funded by guest stays.

How many rooms does Mfuwe Lodge have?

Mfuwe Lodge has eighteen air-conditioned chalets set between the Mfuwe Lagoon and a wafwa (dried oxbow) with a busy waterhole, plus a two-bedroom family house; several chalets have lofts offering additional accommodation for families. The lodge also has lagoon-facing lounge and dining decks, a swimming pool, and a full spa.

Is Mfuwe Lodge open year-round?

Yes. Mfuwe Lodge remains open through the emerald (green) season, when South Luangwa's seasonal bushcamps are closed — making it the base for year-round game viewing inside the park, and the classic first and last stop on a longer Bushcamp Company safari circuit.

When was Mfuwe Lodge last renovated?

Mfuwe Lodge is receiving more care and investment right now than at any point in more than a decade. In 2026, every linen in the lodge was replaced, and the reception, dining and lounge areas were refreshed with a return to classic, traditional African decor. The chalets are scheduled for their own update ahead of the 2027 season. What is already great is getting greater.