Hwange National Park
Hwange National Park: Zimbabwe’s Vast Wildlife Haven and a Photographer’s Dream
Hwange National Park, spanning 14,651 square kilometres of western Zimbabwe, is the country's largest national park and, without a doubt, one of Africa's finest safari destinations. Tucked against the Botswana border, this vast wilderness of Kalahari sand, mopane woodland and open pans is home to one of the continent's great elephant populations, alongside lion, leopard, buffalo, sable antelope and the endangered African wild dog. With Victoria Falls a morning's drive away, Hwange slots beautifully into almost any Zimbabwe safari.
Established as a game reserve in 1928 and a national park since 1961, Hwange owes much of its wildlife to its first warden, Ted Davison, who began pumping water into its pans. Picture golden sunsets over the bushveld, elephant herds crowding the waterholes and bird-filled woodland at every turn. Whether you come for the game drives, the photographic hides or a walking safari, this park delivers on every promise.
Hwange rewards a visit at any time of year: the dry months draw the game to the waterholes, while the rains turn the park green and fill it with migrant birds. No two visits are ever the same, and that blend of comfort and untamed beauty is exactly why we keep going back.
Hwange National Park Facts
- Size: 14,651 square kilometres, Zimbabwe's largest national park
- Location: western Zimbabwe, on the Botswana border, just off the main road between Victoria Falls and Bulawayo
- Established: 1928 as a game reserve; national park since 1961
- Altitude: 938 to 1,152 metres above sea level
- Getting there: three to four hours by road from Victoria Falls, four to five hours from Bulawayo; main entrance gate near Dete
- Malaria: high risk from November to June, low risk from July to October. See malaria in Zimbabwe
- Map: Hwange National Park on HERE WeGo maps, which show the park far more accurately than Google Maps
- Accommodation: Lodges in Hwange
When to Visit Hwange National Park
Hwange is a year-round destination. The dry season, peaking from July to October, draws the wildlife to the waterholes and is our pick for game viewing. The wet season, from November to March, brings the park to life with migrant birds and newborn antelope. Winter nights can drop close to freezing, so pack a warm jacket for the early drives. For month-by-month detail, see our guide to the best time to visit Zimbabwe.
Wildlife and Safaris in Hwange
Hwange is home to over 100 mammal species and around 400 species of birds. Around 40,000 elephants are the headline act, with lion, buffalo, leopard, sable antelope and wild dog among the highlights. Days revolve around game drives, short walking safaris and long, unhurried sessions at the hides and waterholes, a dream for photographers. Accommodation ranges from camps inside the park to lodges in the private reserves just outside it, while the private concessions within the park are reserved for their own guests.
Main Attractions of Hwange National Park
- Around 40,000 elephants, with herds crowding the waterholes
- Lion, leopard and, with luck, African wild dog
- Photographic hides
- Game drives and walking safaris
- Migrant birdlife in the wet season
- Sunsets over the pans
Plan Your Hwange Safari With Us
Tell us your dates, group and budget in the form below, and we'll build a Hwange safari around you, just as we have since 1999.
Hwange National Park Questions Answered
Where is Hwange National Park?
Hwange National Park lies in western Zimbabwe, along the border with Botswana in Matabeleland North. It sits just off the main road between Victoria Falls and Bulawayo, with the main entrance gate near the small town of Dete. Much of the park lies on deep Kalahari sand, between 938 and 1,152 metres above sea level.
How big is Hwange National Park?
Hwange covers 14,651 square kilometres, making it Zimbabwe's largest national park, nearly three times the size of Gonarezhou, the country's second-largest. It was set aside as a game reserve in 1928 and became a national park in 1961. That sheer size is a big part of why game drives here feel so wonderfully uncrowded.
How far is Hwange from Victoria Falls?
Allow three to four hours by road from Victoria Falls to Hwange, and four to five hours from Bulawayo. Road transfers usually enter through the main gate near Dete, while camps deeper in the park are also served by the Hwange airstrips. The easy access makes Hwange a natural partner for the falls on the same safari.
Why does Hwange rely on pumped waterholes?
Most of Hwange has no permanent river, so in the dry season its wildlife depends on waterholes fed by boreholes and pumps. Ted Davison, the park's first warden, began pumping water in the park's early years, and the practice has been kept up ever since. It is why dry-season game viewing concentrates so dramatically around the pans.
Can you see the Big Five in Hwange?
Hwange is home to all of the Big Five, but realistically you should come for four of them. Elephant (around 40,000 of them) and buffalo are seen reliably, lion are regular, and leopard reward patience. Rhino survive in such small numbers that we would never build a Hwange safari around seeing one. African wild dog are the prized bonus.
How does Hwange compare with Mana Pools?
Hwange is the drier, more accessible and more elephant-heavy of the two, while Mana Pools is the wilder river experience. Hwange's game gathers at waterholes on Kalahari sand, a road transfer from Victoria Falls. Mana Pools lies on the Zambezi floodplain, loved for walking and canoe safaris beneath the ana trees. Many travellers combine both.
How does Hwange compare with Chobe National Park?
Hwange and Chobe share elephants that move across the Zimbabwe–Botswana border, but the safaris feel very different. Chobe's best game viewing runs along the Chobe River, often from a boat, and the riverfront can be busy. Hwange's wildlife is spread across waterholes in a far quieter wilderness, with game drives from camps inside and around the park.
Travel To Zimbabwe Now
Map of Lodges in and around Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe Travel Topics
The Perfect Zimbabwe Honeymoon
Most honeymoons are an exercise in doing very little at considerable expense, and there is a great deal to be said for that. Zimbabwe simply arranges better company for it. Elephants come down to drink below the deck while you are still on your first coffee; the guide turns out to know which lion crossed the airstrip in the night; dinner happens on a Zambezi deck while the light goes orange and then goes altogether. Nobody puts Zimbabwe at the top of the shortlist — Kenya and the Cape get there first — which is precisely why the lodges are quieter and the guiding is better than it needs to be.
Top 10 Must See Attractions In Victoria Falls
Livingstone named it after a queen who never saw it, and the Tonga had been calling it Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders, for a very long time before he turned up. Theirs is the better name. Five hundred million litres a minute go over the edge in full flood, which is enough to soak you through a hired raincoat before you are halfway along the Zimbabwe footpath, and enough to hide the falls entirely if you have come in the wrong month. There is also a rock pool at the very lip of the drop that people swim in. We will come to that.
5 Best Lodges In Victoria Falls
You can see the falls properly in ninety minutes. The rest of the week happens wherever you are sleeping, which makes the choice of lodge matter more here than almost anywhere else in Zimbabwe. Some of them are town hotels with a shuttle and a buffet. Others sit far enough upriver that the loudest thing at breakfast is one hippo disagreeing with another. The gap in price between those two experiences is usually smaller than you would expect, and the gap in the holiday is not. Here are five I would put my own money on.
10 Reasons To Visit The Zambezi River
The Zambezi begins as a spring in a patch of Zambian woodland you could step across, and ends two and a half thousand kilometres later in the Indian Ocean, having spent much of the journey acting as the border of half of southern Africa. Six countries. One waterfall that needs no introduction, a dam that made an inland sea, and a stretch below that dam at Mana Pools where you are permitted to walk. It is also, at six in the evening with the light going, the single best place in this part of the continent to be sitting still.
Luxury Tented Safari Camps in Zimbabwe
"Tent" is a word working extremely hard in this part of the brochure. It covers canvas on a hardwood deck with a four-poster and plumbing that would pass in Kensington, and it also covers a bucket shower and a zip. What the two share is the actual reason to choose either: canvas does not keep sound out. You hear the elephants arrive at the Hwange waterhole at two in the morning. You hear the hippos settling their differences on the Zambezi. You lie there listening rather than sleeping, which is rather the point of the whole arrangement.
10 Reasons To Visit The Hwange National Park
Hwange should not really work. Most of it sits on Kalahari sand with no permanent river anywhere near it, and the reason elephants stand shoulder to shoulder at Nyamandhlovu Pan in October is that somebody is running a diesel pump. That decision was taken in the 1920s by a warden named Ted Davison, and it has been kept up, more or less, ever since. Fourteen thousand square kilometres of managed thirst. The Big Five are all present on paper, though I would not build a holiday around seeing the rhino. The elephants are an entirely different proposition.
Zimbabwe Travel Bucket List
For most of the last century the Rhodesian authorities preferred to believe that Zimbabweans had not built Great Zimbabwe. Phoenicians were proposed. So were the Queen of Sheba's architects. The stonework is Shona, laid without mortar, eleven metres high in places, and it is the only ruin I can think of that gave its name to the country containing it. That is the sort of country this is. The obvious things — the falls, the Hwange elephants, the rapids below the gorge — are worth every hour of the flight, and underneath them sits a second Zimbabwe that most itineraries never touch.
10 Reasons to Visit Victoria Falls for an Unforgettable Experience
The bridge was cast in Darlington, shipped out in pieces and bolted together over the gorge in 1905, and people now jump off it on an elastic rope. Victoria Falls has been like this ever since: a serious piece of natural history with an adrenaline economy bolted to the side of it. You can run the grade five rapids in the Batoka Gorge in the morning and be on a boat with a gin and tonic by six, watching the same water arrive flat and innocent above the lip. Both are honest ways to spend a day here. So is doing neither.