Blessed with one daddy of a lake, vivid birdlife and one of Africa’s friendliest populations, Malawi remains one of the continent’s best-kept secrets.

Malawi is celebrated for its lake, also known as Lake Niassa. At close to 580 km long and 75 km wide, it occupies a fifth of the country’s total area and is the third-largest lake in Africa. Over 500 species of fish flutter within its confines. On terra firma, escarpments ascend into rolling plateaus, which cover much of the landscape, particularly in the north. Malawi’s southern reaches are flatter and drier. In other areas there are thick woodlands and swamps. Although the climate is subtropical, Malawi’s rainfall is reliably unreliable; a predicament that commonly results in drought.

So big that its shoreline is imperceptible in parts, Lake Malawi it the country’s undisputed geographic jewel. Skirting its circumference are banks of green hills in the north and stretches of creamy sand in the south. The landscape itself is a who’s who of sub-Saharan stereotypes and then some. Mopane and grasslands sidle up to scrubby marshlands. Tea plantations blanket pockets of the south and the cool, elevated planes of the Nyika Plateau look like they have been carved out of the Scottish highlands.