Do not swim here. That advice sounds picturesque until you see the crocodiles basking on the rocks at Kasaba Bay and understand that they mean it. Nsumbu National Park occupies 2,000 square kilometers on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika in northern Zambia, and the lake shore inside the park - 80 kilometers of it, wrapping four bays and Nundo Head Peninsula - is some of the most dramatic water-and-mountain country in Africa. The balancing rocks at Sumbu Bay look painted on. Views stretch east across open water to the mountains of Tanzania and the DRC. Kasaba Bay Lodge, once the destination of wealthy international travelers flown in on small planes, sits abandoned since 2006 - one casualty of a half-century in which conflict and economics have taken turns keeping visitors away.
In the 1970s, Nsumbu stood with South Luangwa and Kafue as one of the three great national parks of Zambia. Elephants were common. Lions hunted in open country. Kasaba Bay Lodge flew guests directly from Lusaka to Kasaba Bay Airport, a brief hop that bypassed the 340 kilometers of road from Kasama. Then the 1980s and 1990s brought a different story. The domestic airline cut back the flights. Management funding dried up. The border with the DRC, 25 kilometers to the north, grew dangerous during successive Congolese wars. Poachers came and went. Lion sightings dropped from common to occasional. The elephants, too, learned to be scarce. By 2006, Kasaba Bay Lodge - the one that had made Nsumbu famous - closed its doors.
Most of Nsumbu lies within the Central Zambezian miombo woodlands, a broad ecoregion that covers much of south-central Africa with broad-leaved trees that flush red before green each October. But pockets of something rarer grow here too: Itigi-Sumbu thicket, an endangered and nearly impenetrable tangle of shrubs and small trees found almost nowhere else on earth. The Lufubu River has carved a 300-meter-deep gorge in the south of the park, accessible only by rough tracks from Mbala. Along the lake itself, crocodiles and hippos own the water. On land, bushbuck, puku, roan and sable antelope, eland, hartebeest, warthogs, zebra, and spotted hyenas still maintain populations the park is working hard to grow.
Come with binoculars. Flamingos stand pink against the lake margins. African skimmers cut low over the water with their scissor-bills. Whiskered terns, herons, storks, and fish eagles patrol the shore. Pel's fishing owl, that great rust-colored ghost of African rivers, is occasionally glimpsed. For anglers, Lake Tanganyika itself is the draw. Nile perch, goliath tigerfish, vundu catfish, and the elusive nkupi (yellow belly) draw sport fishermen from around the world to the Tanganyika Angling Challenge, held every March or April at Nkamba and Ndole Bay Lodges. The tigerfish - silver, toothy, all muscle - is the one everybody wants on the line.
In 2017, the Frankfurt Zoological Society and Zambia's Department of National Parks and Wildlife formed the Nsumbu Tanganyika Conservation Project. Under project manager Craig Zytkow, the work has grown considerably: better road access from Kasama to Mporokoso to Sumbu (tarred for the first 170 kilometers, gravel for the next 170, with the gravel stretch being upgraded), increased ranger presence, and slow but steady increases in game numbers. Nkamba Bay Lodge stays open inside the park; Ndole Bay Lodge sits just outside its boundary. Both offer game drives, canoeing, boat safaris, and the particular pleasure of watching the sun set across Lake Tanganyika while hippos grunt in the shallows below. Nsumbu is not what it was in 1975. It is becoming something worth visiting again.
Located at 8.74 degrees south, 30.38 degrees east on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika. Served by Kasaba Bay Airport within the park. From altitude, the distinctive shape is the chain of four bays indenting the shoreline, with the dramatic north-facing Nundo Head Peninsula and the deep Lufubu River valley visible to the south.