Victoria Falls announces itself before you see it — a column of spray standing above the treeline, visible for kilometres before the roar of the Zambezi finding open air fills the whole valley. It is where Outland Trails begins its Zambezi Trail experience, and where our own Zambia route takes its cue: not from the falls themselves, but from the gorge system carved beneath them, wave after wave of basalt cliff dropping into a river that never sits still.

From the gorge, the trail drops into the Lower Zambezi Valley proper, the corridor of land between the Zambezi and Kafue rivers. This is gravel in its rawest form: footpaths and sun-baked dirt roads linking villages and farms, river crossings made by local community pontoon rather than bridge, baobab-studded savanna giving way to riverside floodplain and back again. There is no straight line through this country, and you would not want one — every bend brings a new stretch of gorge, a new view down to the water.

Outland Travel’s Zambezi Trail rides the riverside villages by day, greeted by kids on the footpaths and cattle being walked home before the heat sets in, and drifts the river by boat at sundowner time — G&Ts, tiger fishing, and elephant sightings included, with nights spent at a luxury river-side lodge listening to hippos grunt below the deck.

It is dry season riding at its best between May and October, when the valley’s footpaths and pontoon crossings are liveliest and the wildlife concentrates along the river before the October heat and November rains send everyone looking for water elsewhere. Ride hard by day, drift slow by dusk — that is the rhythm of gravel in the Zambezi Valley, and it is one of the best few days of riding anywhere on the continent.