This article appears in Volume 25:
The Pioneer
Issue.

I

I
pronounce this with confidence. My brother, Peter, had visited
Malawi a couple of years ago while working at a hospital in
neighbouring Zambia and was giving me the lowdown on the lake,
Africa’s third largest and populated with parasites and crocodiles.
The gin, sold in sachets like cheap conditioner, sounded even more
lethal.

A mere 24 hours later I’m skinny-dipping in the aforementioned
lake with 15 strangers, tanked up on MG&Ts, as Malawians call
their gin and tonics. Sure, I’ll have a killer hangover, and yes,
I’ll have to pop a pill as a safeguard against parasites. But
adventure is all about doing things that you never thought you
would. Malawi – with a little bit of help from the
43-per-cent-proof gin – pushes me into an adventurous mindset at
warp speed.

This was the first night of my ten-day group trip with Faraway,
a brand-new and emphatically next- generation tour operator.
Wife-and-husband team Helen and Al Robshaw fell in love with Malawi
a few years ago and decided to build their dream itinerary around
the Lake of Stars Festival, which has been taking place on the
shores of Lake Malawi since 2004. Group travel can be a gamble and
I pride myself on being an independent traveller. However, the
thing about adventure is that it balances on a knife edge – too
much and your journey slides into danger or discomfort, an ordeal
rather than a thrill.

Malawi enjoys a reputation as a friendly, relaxed, and compact
African nation but compared to neighbouring Mozambique, the tourism
infrastructure is much less robust – the roads are

less well-trodden and public transport is still a bit of an
enigma. What small independent group operators like Faraway hope to
do is open up new destinations like Malawi to solo travellers by
removing the elements of risk and friction, leaving nothing but
distilled discovery.

On our first morning we kayak from Cape Maclear (on the southern
shore of Lake Malawi and a four-hour drive from Lilongwe, the
capital city) to Domwe Island, a paddle of just over an hour. Apart
from a handful of chefs and guides working with Kayak Africa, which
owns Domwe and the nearby Mumbo Island, we have the entire island
to ourselves. This knowledge fills us with an anarchic, castaway
spirit, which explains the afternoon gin drinking, the dancing
around the fire to Fela Kuti and the skinny-dipping by
moonlight.

Malawi Gin has been distilled from sugar cane since the 1960s,
perhaps a legacy from the Scottish missionaries – the first to
enter the country was David Livingstone in 1859. MG&Ts might
not protect us from bilharzia parasites or stray crocodiles (to be
fair, they’re a rare sight in the southern waters of the lake), but
they certainly protect us from the fear of both. Before I left my
brother had smiled at my confident assertions that I’d not set foot
in the lake and gently murmured, “It’s pretty tempting, Anna.” He
wasn’t wrong. Carved out of the landscape by the Great Rift Valley,
the colossal Lake Malawi looks like the sea, fringed with beaches
and rocky islands. As soon as I see it, it seems perverse not to
jump in.

For many years Malawi was dominated by its self-appointed “life
president” Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who notoriously banned a Simon
and Garfunkel song because the lyrics – “Cecilia, you’re breaking
my heart” – coincided with an emotional ruck happening with his
long-term mistress and “official hostess of Malawi”, Cecilia
Tamanda Kadzamira. As you can imagine, Banda’s other decisions
weren’t as absurdly amusing – political opponents and dissenting
journalists were ruthlessly quashed until Banda’s defeat in
Malawi’s first multi-party elections in 1994. Despite the
prevailing poverty – Malawi has a primarily rural and agricultural
economy and remains heavily aid-dependent – this is a friendly,
upbeat and welcoming nation and tourism is a fledgling industry
most Malawians are keen to foster.

As we load up our kayaks the next morning to paddle across the
shimmering waters to Mumbo Island, Malawi’s potential as a tourist
destination seems as vast as the lake. Yet tourism contributed just
4.5 per cent to the national GDP according to the most recent
figures, compared to neighbouring Tanzania’s 17.5 per cent.
Responsible tourism isn’t just about choosing sustainable hotels or
stressing about your carbon footprint – it’s also about thinking
about where you spend your dollar and about redistributing it more
fairly across the globe, ideally in places that can benefit from an
additional source of income.

Mumbo Island takes the luxury up a notch from Domwe, where we
had slept in tents on the beach. Mumbo is pricier, at £150 per
person including food and bucketloads of gin, but the clifftop
bungalows are among the most romantic I’ve ever set my bare foot in
– the stuff that honeymoons are made of.

From the islands we jump in the bus and travel four hours south
to the mountainous Zomba Plateau. Zomba Forest Lodge is run by
Petal and Tom, who worked in events and hospitality in England for
years before returning to Petal’s homeland and adopting a 1920s
bungalow, nurturing 20 acres of rainforest in a gully and helping
to put this often- overlooked area on the map.

Tom and Petal are heavily involved in the anti- deforestation
movement – forest fires are a regular occurrence and as we hike in
Liwonde National Park we see swathes of supposedly protected forest
razed to the ground. “Malawi suffers from the fastest rate of
deforestation in Sub-Saharan Africa and right now, 95 per cent of
the population still relies on firewood for both cooking and
heating,” Petal explains to me. They sponsor a local football team
in Zomba, whose players also do double duty as volunteer
firefighters in the case of a raging forest blaze.

Next we return to the lake, this time to Kumbali Lake Retreat in
Salima, a short boat or bus ride along the beach from the site of
the Lake of Stars Festival. 2018 marks 15 years since it was set up
by Will Jameson, a British music lover who volunteered with the
Wildlife Society in Malawi in 1998 and eventually returned in 2003
to encourage international tourism. Today it’s one of the best-
known African festivals on the global circuit, with African and
international artists playing to a mixed crowd of locals and
festival-lovers from the world over. After catching an acoustic set
by Malawian superstar Lazarus and hip-hop by Lady Pace, we watch
Major Lazer take to the main stage in the midst of a sandstorm.
There’s a fashion show, a pop-up roller disco and performance
poetry by Hollie McNish and Michael Pederson. It’s a triumph,
although having danced through a sandstorm I’ll never complain
about a muddy British festival again.

After washing the grit out of our ears we make our way to Majete
Wildlife Reserve. Mkulumadzi Lodge is a cluster of eight stylish
chalets overlooking a river where elephants and hippos roam. Majete
is a Big Five park without the hefty price tags or the roar of
packed Land Rovers. It’s here that I say goodbye to Malawi the best
way I know how – by spending the night with it under the stars on a
raised deck or “sky bed”. When the last thing you see at night is
the vastness of the universe, you can’t carry any petty concerns or
anxieties into your dreams with you. I wake up gently to a
reddening sky, feeling like the luckiest – and also the only –
person on the planet. Adventure does this to you. And Malawi
certainly knows how to serve up an adventure.