Likoma Island

Likoma sits in the middle of Lake Malawi's eastern half, entirely surrounded by Mozambican territorial waters. It is, nevertheless, completely Malawian, a quirk of the colonial boundary negotiations that drew the lake's international border along its eastern shoreline rather than its centre, leaving Likoma and its smaller sister island Chizumulu as Malawian enclaves in Mozambican lake. This geographical improbability has preserved something exceptional. The island's lack of road connections to anywhere, accessible only by light aircraft or the MV Ilala ferry, has kept it free from the development pressures that have transformed more accessible parts of the lake.

The roads on Likoma, where they exist, are unpaved and mostly navigated on foot or bicycle. The dominant sounds are wind, water, and the calls of fish eagles. The dominant visual features are ancient baobab trees of extraordinary girth and, rising improbably from the island's centre, one of the most incongruous architectural monuments in Africa: St Peter's Cathedral, completed in 1905 by the Universities' Mission to Central Africa using stone quarried on the island. It is vast, larger in footprint than Winchester Cathedral in England, with stained-glass windows depicting David Livingstone and scenes from the mission's history, and carved soapstone choir stalls imported from England that produce a quality of disorientation purely African or purely European architecture never achieves. The cathedral is still in active use by the island's Anglican community.

The lake water around Likoma is among the clearest in Lake Malawi, the island's position in the deeper, more open eastern lake means less sedimentation and greater visibility than the southern shore. The rocky shoreline holds dense cichlid populations, and the deeper rocky walls accessible to certified divers reveal species communities not visible in the shallows. Above the water, Kaya Mawa Lodge, built directly into the granite shoreline with rooms incorporating natural rock as walls and floors, is one of the best lodges in Malawi by any measure: 10 rooms, off-grid, ultra-luxury, and exceptionally well-run. Three to five nights at minimum; longer for divers and travellers who want the full barefoot disconnect.