Testing The Waters

Views Of A Lifetime Lie Along The Raging Torrents Of Victoria Falls, The WorldS Largest Curtain Of Water Straddling Zimbabwe And Zambia.

- Sathya Saran

It is late May, and Victoria Falls occupies our imagination as my husband, 12-year-old granddaughter, and I enter the western Zimbabwean town that the waterfall has lent its name to. The tour is scheduled for the next day, but we manage to get a good look at the rising spray, which I learn is visible even from 20 kilometres away. Rising like a cloud from a valley, the tantalising sight adds to our impatience.

Straddling the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, Victoria Falls is the world’s largest curtain of water and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Locally known as Mosi-oaTunya—‘the smoke that thunders’—this part of the Zambezi river plunges down basalt gorges, forming a gleaming 1.7-kilometre-wide sheet. In the months of February and March, when the Zambezi is in full flood, up to 500 million litres of water cascade down every minute, resulting in an almost mythical display of mist and rainbows.

The first sight of the falls is both exciting and disappointing. Various viewpoints dot a 2.5-kilometre-long walkway at the top of the gorge on the Zimbabwe side of the falls, inside Victoria Falls National Park. From the first, I see the water rush in a breathless torrent, surge around a bend, and tumble deep into a seemingly bottomless gorge, bringing to mind Kubla Khan’s caverns. The disappointment comes from the fact that there is no way to see the waterfall in its entirety. It must be viewed piecemeal, so we walk along to take the five different falls that comprise Victoria: The Devil’s Cataract, Main Falls, Rainbow Falls and Horseshoe Falls (the Eastern Cataract lies on the Zambian side, and isn’t visible).