Hotels in Eswatini

Eswatini, known as Swaziland until 2018, is a small landlocked kingdom wedged between South Africa and Mozambique, and one of the last absolute monarchies in the world. It packs an improbable range of landscapes into an area you can drive across in three hours, from the misty highveld around Mbabane down through the Ezulwini Valley to hot lowveld bush on the Mozambican side.

The wildlife punches above its weight. Hlane Royal National Park has lion, elephant and white rhino; Mkhaya Game Reserve is one of the more reliable places in southern Africa to track black rhino on foot; and Mlilwane, with no large predators, lets you walk, cycle or ride a horse among zebra and antelope. All three are within an hour or so of each other.

Traditional culture remains genuinely central rather than staged, most visibly at the Umhlanga reed dance in late August and the Incwala kingship ceremony around the turn of the year. The Ezulwini and Malkerns valleys are also known for candle-making, glassblowing and weaving workshops. Most people arrive overland, slotting the country between Johannesburg, Kruger and the KwaZulu-Natal coast.