We were still coming down from an amazing three weeks spent self-driving in a rented 4×4 around Namibia and Botswana. That was an incredible road-and-camping-trip with a safari, a seal colony, some towering sand dunes, and a ghost town thrown in for good measure and we didn’t want it to end.
But it did end, in Botswana, and we returned our rented truck. Then we started thinking about how to move on, and where to.
The answer to that was Zambia, and so this post is a report about our experience crossing from Botswana to Zambia at the Kazungula border. The border crossing in question is very straightforward, so this is a quick rundown on how to get there and what to expect.
Before you go
There isn’t a lot of prep-work necessary for Zambia, at least as far as ‘getting there’ goes. You probably don’t need a visa (check that, according to your nationality).
There is more than one border-crossing opportunity around here. Zambia, Namibia, and Zimbabwe are all just a stone’s throw away.
We left Botswana and entered Zambia in Kazungula which is a town of the same name on both sides of the border, near Kasane (in Botswana) and Livingstone (in Zambia).
There are several ATMs at the border and you can get USD as well as Kwacha and Pula. There were money changers lurking around as well, if you want to unload some unneeded currency.
This border crossing is open from 06:00 to 22:00 every day.
The route
We’d read that the Kazungula border crossing involved a ferry on the Zambezi river, to get to Zambia. That’s no longer the case, there’s now a long bridge linking the two countries together. You’ll need to get yourself to Kazungula, and then from town you take a taxi across the bridge to the border complex where you do the immigration formalities for both sides in the same building.
Once you’re finished with the formalities you can find onward transport right outside the immigration building.
The entire thing, from Kazungula (Botswana side) to the border complex with the passports/immigration formalities included took us just about an hour. That will depend on queues at the border of course but it’s all very easy and convenient.
Maun/Kasane to Kazungula
Coming from Maun, we got an early start. Minibuses leave quite frequently from Maun bus station. None were going direct to Kasane so we took one to Nata. Once in Nata, we waited a while with other passengers in a parking lot for the connecting minibus which everyone assured us was coming, to pass by and pick us up. It did indeed come, and the whole trip from Maun to Kasane took about seven hours.
The second minibus dropped us at the T-junction just before Galabgwe Mall just outside Kasane, in Kazungula on the Botswana side. A taxi was already lying in wait ready to pounce on us.
If you’re leaving from Kasane in the first place there is a public bus stand where you can try asking around for a ride to the border.
The taxi took us through Kazangula (such as it is) and all the way over the bridge to the one stop border post. It takes about fifteen minutes in a car.
The border
Over the bridge, your ride should take you all the way to the carpark in front of immigration. Both countries have their counters in the same building and you can conveniently stamp out of one and into the next right there. No officers even checked our passports as we entered (or after, exited) the border. The whole thing seemed pretty casual, a big change from a lot of the other borders we’d been crossing lately in West and Central Africa.
Kazungula to Livingstone
When you exit the immigration building head back the short distance to the big carpark. There you’ll find buses running to Livingstone and Lusaka, and taxis that can drop you at the local minibus station in Kazungula (Zambian side). It’s around eight hours to Lusaka.
Since no buses were departing any time soon, we took a taxi to Kazungula (Zambia), which took ten minutes. From there we got another taxi onwards to Livingstone, which is about an hour away.
We spent nearly a week just chilling in Livingstone, there are some cafes and the town museum is good. It’s a nice place to relax and of course – see Victoria Falls. From a little outside of Livingstone you can also walk across another bridge in no-man’s land to the edge of Zimbabwe without doing immigration – you leave your passport at the counter in Zambia.
There’s a bungee jump midway along the bridge.
Or, you can actually do immigration and just enter Zimbabwe. It’s worth going even just for a short trip to see the falls from both sides. We just rambled back and forth between the two, this time around, but on a previous trip we powered through (it was the rainy season) to Zimbabwe.
Keep in mind, the season you are there will heavily influence your experience at the falls in terms of how much water there is actually, you know…falling.
Read More
If you’re making plans for Botswana, check out this guide we wrote about road-tripping and camping in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa.
For more of our adventures (and misadventures) as we travel from Cameroon to Japan, check out the rest of my stories from the road.
We’ve crossed a lot of borders by all sorts of random transport. Have a look at our Africa border crossing reports for strange stories and sage advice, here.
