An inexpensive and accessible country with a near-perfect climate, Malawi is dominated by wild forested peaks and the country's major attraction: Lake Malawi itself, the southernmost of the Rift Valley lakes and the most beautiful. The 500km lake, with its tropical white beaches and crystal clear water, makes the area a natural focus for vacationers. The more adventurous are drawn to the breezy highland plateaux and the lush Shire River Valley in Liwonde National Park, named Elephant Marsh by Livingstone on his exploration of the Rift Valley, supporting Malawi's largest population of crocodiles as well as hippos. Malawi has experienced considerable change since the first edition, making this an accurate and invaluable guide for all visitors.
African travel specialist Philip Briggs has been exploring the highways, byways and backwaters of the world's most challenging and exciting continent since 1986, when he spent several months backpacking on a shoestring from Nairobi to Cape Town. In 1991, he wrote the Bradt Guide to South Africa, the first such guidebook to be published internationally after the release of Nelson Mandela.
Over the rest of the 1990s, Philip wrote a series of pioneering Bradt Guides to destinations that were then - and in some cases still are - otherwise practically uncharted by the travel publishing industry. These included the first dedicated guidebooks to Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana and Rwanda (co-authored with Janice Booth), all of which are now in their 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th edition.
Philip has visited more than two dozen African countries, and written about most of them, whether it be for guidebook publishers such as AA, APA-Insight, Berlitz, Camerapix, Dorling Kindersley, Frommers, Struik-New Holland and 30 Degrees South, or for specialist travel and wildlife magazines including Africa Birds & Birding, Africa Geographic, BBC Wildlife, Travel Africa and Wanderlust.
He still spends at least four months on the road every year, and spends his rest of the time battering away at a keyboard in the sleepy dorp of Bergville, in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg region of South Africa. He is married to the travel photographer Ariadne Van Zandbergen and lives with three dogs and a cat. When not obssessing over some or other aspect of African history, culture, wildlife or travel, Philip's interests include music, reading and walking.
