The Perfect 10-Day Route for Zimbabwe

This 10-day route across Zimbabwe is for travelers who care as much about history and landscape as wildlife, and who are happy on buses. The pace is moderate: two or three nights per stop, with travel days kept to 4 to 6 hours. You’ll use long-distance buses between cities, an optional overnight train for the last leg, and taxis or a hired driver for the day trips around Harare and Bulawayo.

Days 1-2: Harare and Epworth

Harare is a soft landing: leafy suburbs, decent cafés and the easiest place to sort a local SIM card before heading south. Use your full day for Epworth Balancing Rocks, about 13 kilometers southeast of the center, where granite boulders sit stacked on each other at improbable angles. One formation appeared on Zimbabwean banknotes, and a local guide will point out which. Go in the late afternoon, when the stone turns gold and the heat eases.

Days 3-4: Masvingo and Great Zimbabwe

A 4 to 5 hour bus covers the 290 kilometers to Masvingo. Skip the town itself and sleep at one of … read more 👉

This 10-day route across Zimbabwe is for travelers who care as much about history and landscape as wildlife, and who are happy on buses. The pace is moderate: two or three nights per stop, with travel days kept to 4 to 6 hours. You’ll use long-distance buses between cities, an optional overnight train for the last leg, and taxis or a hired driver for the day trips around Harare and Bulawayo.

Days 1-2: Harare and Epworth

Harare is a soft landing: leafy suburbs, decent cafés and the easiest place to sort a local SIM card before heading south. Use your full day for Epworth Balancing Rocks, about 13 kilometers southeast of the center, where granite boulders sit stacked on each other at improbable angles. One formation appeared on Zimbabwean banknotes, and a local guide will point out which. Go in the late afternoon, when the stone turns gold and the heat eases.

Days 3-4: Masvingo and Great Zimbabwe

A 4 to 5 hour bus covers the 290 kilometers to Masvingo. Skip the town itself and sleep at one of the lodges or the campsite near the ruins, 27 kilometers out, so you can be at the gate when it opens. Great Zimbabwe, built between roughly the 11th and 15th centuries, gave the country its name, and the walls of the Great Enclosure rise around 11 meters without a drop of mortar. Climb the Hill Complex first while it’s cool, then work down to the valley ruins. The next afternoon, take a taxi to Mutirikwi Beach on Lake Mutirikwi for a lazy few hours on the sand and a sundowner, keeping out of the water because of crocodiles.

Days 5-7: Bulawayo and the Matobo Hills

Another 4 hour bus brings you to Bulawayo, a calmer, more walkable city than Harare with colonial-era arcades and street corners where the pace slows right down. Start with the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, home to one of the largest mounted elephants on display anywhere. Spend the next morning at Khami Ruins National Monument, 22 kilometers west, a UNESCO-listed hillside of decorated stone terraces. Day 7 is the big one: hire a car and driver (roughly US$60 to 100 for the day) for Matobo National Park. See the paintings at the Matobo Hills rock art sites, then spend the afternoon on a Matobo Hills hike, scrambling over bald granite domes to viewpoints where the kopjes run to the horizon.

Days 8-10: Victoria Falls

Reach Victoria Falls town by a 5 to 6 hour bus, or take the overnight train from Bulawayo, which leaves in the evening, takes 12 hours or more, and is slow, cheap and full of character. Spend day 9 at the Mosi-oa-Tunya / Victoria Falls Rainforest Viewing Area, and if your dates fall around a full moon, book the evening rainforest opening to see the lunar rainbow form in the spray of Victoria Falls. Day 10 leaves time for a final walk to the viewpoints before your flight.

As a bonus, take a half-day from Harare to Domboshava, a granite dome on the city’s northern edge with a cave of faded rock paintings and a sunset view over the bush.