Central

East of Lilongwe the plateau drops to the lake at Salima, and the beach at Senga Bay just beyond it is the nearest stretch of Lake Malawi to the capital, a couple of hours away: a long sand beach shared by fishing villages and lodges, with boats out to a rocky island offshore and a swim where the lodge or local people say, as everywhere on the lake. From Salima the lakeshore road runs north through Nkhotakota, an old lake port of mosques and markets where the lake steamer calls, and on towards Nkhata Bay and the north.

Above the lakeshore road, the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve climbs the escarpment inland of the town: rugged country of miombo woodland and rivers that tumble down towards the lake, the Bua among them. Its wildlife has been restored, with elephants brought back in numbers, and it is visited on foot and by boat as much as by vehicle: walks with a guide along the rivers, a canoe on the water and a drive through the woodland. A lodge and a camp stand inside the reserve on the rivers, and an entrance fee is charged.

South of Lilongwe on the main road, Dedza is a cool highland town under the forested cone of Dedza mountain, with a pottery whose tableware is sold across the country. In the granite hills around it lies the Chongoni Rock Art Area, a World Heritage site: rock shelters whose walls were painted over many centuries, the older paintings in red by hunter-gatherers, the later ones in white by farming people, some of them used in ceremonies within living memory. A few of the shelters lie a short walk from the road, and a local guide, found through the town's lodges or the villages below the hills, leads the way to them.

Kasungu National Park lies in the west of the region on the Zambian border, beyond the tobacco-farming town of Kasungu on the main road north. It is the region's largest park, a wide, flat country of miombo woodland and grassy dambos around a dam, with elephants, zebra, buffalo and antelope that are fewer and shyer than in the parks of the south. A lodge stands by the dam at its centre; the tracks are dirt, and the park is a stop for a night or two for a visitor heading north rather than a destination in itself.

Away from the lake, the region is the plateau: maize and tobacco fields, tobacco barns and villages of brick houses along red laterite roads, with the main road north to Mzuzu and the main road west to the Zambian border at Mchinji crossing it. South-west of the capital, the Dzalanyama Forest Reserve covers a long ridge of miombo woodland on the Mozambican border, a quiet place of walks and birdwatching an hour or two from Lilongwe, with a forest lodge for the night.