Kutali Camp

The basic but comfortable bush camp imbues the spirit of an African safari, offering an unbeatably authentic experience in a beautiful riverside setting.

Charlie Higgins

14 October 2025

Visit Reports

Name: Kutali Camp

Destination: Zambia

Region: Lower Zambezi

Rooms: 5 (Twin)

Category: $$$ ‘Bush Camp’

Dates Open: May - November

Children: 13+

Date of Visit: May 2025

Number of Nights: 2

01.Overview

This is a real bush camp, the only one truly under canvas in Lower Zambezi. The Classic Zambia team take hosting a safari camp seriously, and you really do feel in the deep bush. The camp is well dispersed along the edge of the Zambezi under the canopy of a magical winter thorn forest. The forest location means that you are constantly surrounded by birdsong, interspersed by the occasional bellowing of the hippos – it really is an enchanting location, unseparated from the wildlife. Elephants walked right through the camp and each morning you can see a variety of interesting prints on the sandy floors of the dining area and firepit next to the bar, including leopard and lion.

The facilities are deliberately simple but high quality; the food is wholesome; the bucket showers are hot and high pressure, the toilets flush, and the staff are unfailingly cheery and friendly. It has all the facilities you could ask for in a very atmospheric bush camp. Everything for the guests is under canvas, and the only permanent buildings are the admin area, kitchen, and staff accommodation, which are unobtrusively tucked away at the back and hidden by tall woven screens. There is solar power with a generator back-up and you are not disturbed by unnatural noises of any sort. By contrast, you do hear (and see) a lot of hippo snorting and squabbling in the lagoon in front of the accommodation, and the occasional lion rumbling in the distance.

A visit to Kutali can be coupled with a visit to its sister camp, priced the same, on Chulu Island, a half-hour boat ride upstream. This is a medium sized island in the Zambezi, with a fair variety of game on the island itself, but also easy access to the mainland, and can make for a very pleasant extended stay.

02.Location & Access

Depending on where you come from, access is likely to be via the river or Jeki airstrip. Flights from Lusaka service Jeki quite regularly, and there is now an airlink to South Luangwa, but this is both intermittent and can be extremely expensive.

The camp itself is beautifully set between a winter thorn forest and the banks of the Zambezi (15°37’53”S 29°43’48”E). Lower Zambezi is a very picturesque park in general, but even by those standards this place really does feel like a little corner of paradise.

03.Rooms

The rooms – actually tents - are a major feature of the camp. The screen sides offer panoramic views and leave you feeling very at one with nature – yet securely so.

The five smart and well-spaced tents have comfortable double (or twin) beds, within a large mosquito-netted space, over which is stretched a large waterproof flysheet. The adjoining well- appointed open-air bathroom with both a flushing loo and a magnificent view of the Zambezi, makes all the difference to under-canvas living. The showers are well-constructed using soft-buckets, which can be filled with cold, warm or hot water on request at almost any time. They work very well, giving more than enough water for a long luxuriant shower. The overall impression is of quality construction, well-thought out rooms and bathrooms with everything you might need – such as charging points, fans and plenty of lighting options – but nothing extraneous.

We found them very comfortable as well as cool and airy to sleep. The nighttime sounds of hippos and the occasional rumble of something else, never fail to remind you of the adventure.

04.Main Area

The simplicity and openness of the main area encapsulates the ethos of this camp. A simple open-sided canvas-roofed gazebo covers the ‘messing area’, consisting of a wooden bar, a food serving table, a number of dining tables and suite of sofas with a few choice books and maps. Next to it the open campfire – lit every evening and rekindled in the morning – is a great place for your afternoon tea, evening G&T, or morning porridge. But tables are also set up on the floodplain in front of the camp, often frequented by hippos, for the weekly ‘braai’.

There are no irrelevancies like a pool or gym. In fact, the whole camp is dismantled down to ground level at the onset of every wet season and reverts to nature, leaving only the floor bases, underground plumbing and wiring in situ, until the whole camp is resurrected in April each year. This contributes to the camp’s ‘mobile’ feeling and its lack of imposition on the nature that surrounds it. Hippos regularly walk past the accommodation during their nightly manoeuvres, elephants mosey around the tents during the day, and you can always spot interesting prints all over the sandy floor of the mess tent.

05.F&B

Food is excellent. Menus are communicated to you in advance so you can make selection from the limited choice or point out something you cannot eat, but basically you have what has been prepared. The food is fresh, tasty and unpretentious, in line with the camp’s ethos. It is also plentiful and seconds are available whenever wanted. The wine is South African and all normal sprits are provided, FOC, but, as you might expect, there is not a vast wine cellar to choose from.

06.Staff (excluding guides)

We were hosted by the Classic Safaris husband and wife team, Mark and Jessi. They were very good, welcoming and relaxed hosts, who nonetheless ran a tight ship. All the staff are very friendly and keen to help you with anything you might need. Nothing is too much trouble and whatever activities they offer, they will try to provide whenever you want it. The rooms and the central messing area is kept neat at all times. Although the living is outdoors, nothing is out of place and everything is as clean as you would wish.

07.Guides

My guide was Esau, whom I really liked. He was both engaging and interesting and fun to spend time with on a fishing trip, as well as being justifiably cautious on the canoe ride, given the proximity of the large number of hippos. Overall, I would rate him as an excellent and experienced guide. My assistant guide, Zuze, who was with me in my canoe, handled the transfers on the river, and he was clearly an experienced bootman. I was pleased to see that any rubbish that floated by whilst on the river, was picked up by whoever saw it.

08.Activities

There are plenty of activities at Kutali, and we sampled fishing, canoeing and the game drives. The fishing was great, not least because it meant a very relaxing boat cruise both up and downstream and over to the Zimbabwean riverbank.

We requested a walk and this was going to go ahead but then the ranger did not show up. The need for rangers to accompany walks – and the prohibition of even fully qualified guides from carrying firearms remains a serious drawback of safaris in Zambia overall in our view – and, sadly, Kutali, like all camps, is subject to this.

Birding and photography safaris are another speciality of this camp, and a specific guide tent for a single person rather than a client couple is provided for parties which bring their own guide, as one couple did whilst we were staying at Kutali.

There is no ‘bush dinner’ as such, but with the camp being so very much ‘of the bush’, the weekly braai on the flat flood plain in front of the main area of the camp, served very much as this would, with hippos snorting in the water just a few metres away.

09.Wildlife

The wildlife in this part of the park is excellent. Apart from the hippos and crocs beside the camp, on the river there was a plethora of birds, from many species of eagle including the Martial Eagle, Fish Eagle, and Snake Eagle, to kingfishers, weavers, bee-eaters, lilac-breasted rollers, ducks, egrets, ibis, storks and herons of all varieties.

Also noteworthy were the hundreds of thousands of butterflies which seemed to be crossing back and forth between Zimbabwe and Zambia, finding no trouble at all in managing the long stretch of open water and the wind that might be against them. It was particularly fun watching quite large families of elephant of all ages, wade across the Zambezi, bound for midstream islands with more succulent grass than the mainland. We saw many impala males rutting and seeking to mate with large herds of females in season. Eland, the one solitary kudu in the entire park, waterbuck, bushbuck, warthog, a few buffalo, and many baboons were also spotted.

The highlight was on the final morning when we chanced upon a long-lashed female leopard which had been stalking a male impala, only to lose it an ambush by the two male lions which rule the pride that inhabits this side of the park. She looked on miserably from a comfortable spot high in a large tree, whilst they gorged themselves on her intended breakfast.

10.Final Notes / Comments / Recommendations

Kutali is one of our favourite camps anywhere in Zambia. The great selling points of this camp are its deep immersion in its environment, its transient unobtrusive feeling, and the beauty of the surroundings under the broad winter thorn tree canopy. These things you can see after a short visit to the camp. But what also impresses you is how welcoming it is for the right kind of person, who may be looking for this experience.

This is not a camp for those who want a holiday with a bit of game viewing thrown in, but for those who really want a safari. You need to be an active participant at this camp, not a passive tourist. In the mornings clients start at the crack of dawn and despite this there is a frisson of excitement about what you may find that morning in the bush or on the river. The camp is very well run and graciously hosted by Mark and Jessi, who also run Chulu Island. They are scrupulous in trying to create a real bush experience for their clients and so no intrusion of the virtual world is permitted.

We believe both of Classic Zambia’s camps in Lower Zambezi (Kutali and Chulu Island) will repay the input of energy and engagement that you put into them. Those willing do so will feel that this camp is well worth the price, which is not excessive.