The Bush Telegraph: Scotland in Africa, I presume Our guide was Chris Badger, an Englishman who has lived in Africa for almost 40 years, a true man of the bush and, so we discovered on our last night in his incomparable company, a blues harmonica player of sublime talent. River trips in colourful wooden skiffs are central to the Mvuu experience for this is hippo and croc central HQ. On our first expedition down river, we found ourselves drifting slowly towards the gaping mouths of a family of giant crocs, cooling off on an island mid-stream. At first there is something mesmerising about their statuesque stillness, undulating rows of teeth, upturned smiling lips, and glassy, reptile eyes. Until, that is, the split second when they explode en masse into the water with the shock and awe of a ballistic missile strike. Always a lover of birdsong, I had never thought of myself as a "twitcher." But at Mvuu, a birding paradise, we were all twitchers now. At dawn and dusk the riverbank came alive with a chameleon intensity, a fluid dance of light and shade, flecked with primary splashes of reds, blues and greens. "There!" shouted Chris excitement in his voice, as our binos swung round in unison. It was a white-backed night heron, recognisable by its huge eyes and long neck. This was followed by a powder flash of blue and red as a malachite kingfisher pierced the water like a dart. And there the exquisite red and yellow faces of some Lilian's Lovebirds. But best of all was a pair of giant, very rare and very shy, Pel's fishing owls and the eerie call of their juvenile offspring like a whistle descending down a well. Game drives at Mvuu are equally rewarding. On our way to find Liwonde's breeding pair of highly endangered black rhino, we passed herds of bushbuck, reedbuck, waterbuck and gorgeous sable with their shaggy brown coats and swept-back horns. And, to order, Chris tracked my first-ever family of porcupines. Surprisingly difficult to find in the bush, we watched them scuttling through the tall grass like a troupe of giant hamsters in tutus. And then it was the turn of a family of dwarf mongooses, heads popping in and out of their tree-hole nest like a slapstick comedy routine. "That's the wonderful thing about game drives," observed Chris. You always see something different. Here we are mesmerised by mongooses and ignoring three bull elephants! On the road north along the western shore of Lake Malawi, it was impossible to tire of the kaleidoscope of daily life in rural Africa. Everyone was on the road to somewhere and most were walking or cycling. The cyclists carried outsized loads strapped on by nothing more than old tyres cut into strips. Stopping for a tea-break, we got chatting to one of their number, an elderly gentleman called Chaos wearing a battered pin-strip jacket, khaki shorts and a pair of flip-flops as he reminisced about Malawi's colonial past. It was just one of many such heart-warming encounters. Lake Malawi Our destination was Chelinda Lodge high on the Nyika plateau in the remote far north of Malawi. At nights the temperature here can fall well below freezing and Chelinda Lodge, all wood and stone and open log fires, is built on the top of a hill surrounded by pine forest looking out over the surrounding hills like the game lodge of a Scottish laird. The Nyika was first made famous by Laurens Van Der Post in his 1952 book, Venture to the Interior, and it remains by any standards one of the world's most unusual ecosystems. Show anyone a photo of these stunning landscapes and all will swear it must be Scotland. Just look! There are the rolling russet-coloured heathlands, the ferns and rocky outcrops, the hollows and dips and the long evening shadows; there the clumps of forest, the babbling brooks and peat-coloured burns. Among the grasslands you will even find many a rare orchid. Surely a lone piper will surely soon start playing a lament as the silhouette of the monarch of the glen rises over the skyline. But hey, what's this? If my eyes don't deceive me, that's a herd of zebra and some roan antelope with their Zorro-like masks and elfen ears. There are eland and reedbuck, bushbuck, warthog, spotted hyena and side-striped jackal. Although a sighting eluded us during our visit, leopard are often seen as well as the occasional elephant. There are more than 400 bird species and during a magical forest walk we ourselves saw a white-necked raven, a white-starred robin, a mountain greenbul, a bar-throated apalis, and a Waller's starling with its striking red-tipped wings - not to mention a hyper-active bushpig that came with a few feet before spotting us and scuttling off into the undergrowth. The Nyika is unique. It's a landscape that inhabits the mind long after the visitor has returned to a more mundane reality. There are many myths and legends associated with this place and Chelinda Lodge has heard more than its fair share over a warming glass around its blazing log fires. Like many of Malawi's underexplored safari experiences, it has a magic that deserves a wider audience. Richard and Sarah Madden are travelling with Wilderness Safaris (wilderness-safaris.com), which offers access to more than eight million acres of Africa's wildlife reserves. South African Airways offers return flights to Malawi from London Heathrow via Johannesburg from £809.75pp. Price includes tax, surcharges and APD. For more information, please visit www.flysaa.com or call 0844 375 9680. Competition: win a pair of £540 binoculars Telegraph Travel has teamed up with Swarovski Optik to offer you the chance to win a pair of CL Pocket binoculars, worth £540. Previous Bush Telegraph columns The Bush Telegraph: The transgender lioness The Bush Telegraph: on the edge of Victoria Falls The Bush Telegraph: 'How I escaped a crocodile' The Bush Telegraph: close encounters of the herd kind The Bush Telegraph: a lions' feast in Hwange National Park The Bush Telegraph: the top tracker of Hwange The Bush Telegraph: a Namibian road trip The Bush Telegraph: saving the black rhino The Bush Telegraph: how the Himba freshen up The Bush Telegraph: The Namib - a desert with a thirst for life