The Flight of Angels

From the ground you only ever see the falls in pieces. The spray hides some of it, the forest hides more, and the chasm is too narrow to stand back from. From a helicopter the whole thing makes sense at once: the Zambezi well over a kilometre wide, sliding flat between its islands, and then a single dark crack across it, almost straight, with the whole river pouring in along its length.

The name comes from Livingstone, who wrote that scenes so lovely must have been admired by angels in their flight. The pilot takes you over the falls in a wide loop, usually a figure of eight so that both sides of the aircraft get their turn, low enough to pick out the islands along the lip and the rainforest on the Zimbabwean bank.

Then the part people do not expect. Below the falls the river turns into the gorges and zigzags back and forth through a run of deep, narrow cuts in the basalt, each one a line where the falls once stood before the water wore its way back upstream. You follow them down towards the Batoka Gorge, over the bridge and the river the rafts run, and it reads like a diagram of what the Zambezi has been doing for a very long time.

The longer flight carries on upstream over the national park on your side of the river: Zambezi National Park from Zimbabwe, Mosi-oa-Tunya from Zambia. Elephant, buffalo and hippo are sometimes easy to pick out from above. Nothing is promised, but you cover a lot of ground in a few minutes.

The season changes the picture more than the flight does. At high water the spray rises in a white column far above the falls and you fly along the edge of it, with the curtain half hidden. When the river drops, the spray thins and you see the rock face, the islands and the shape of the drop. Neither is the wrong time to go.

Fly early in a stay, after a first walk along the falls, because it explains everything you then do on the ground. It is a loop from the helipad and back rather than a transfer, so it fits into any morning or afternoon without moving anything else.

Good to know

• The short flight covers the falls and the gorges. The longer one adds the national park upstream.
• Expect to be asked for passenger weights, which decide where everyone sits.
• The Zambian operator sets a minimum age for small children. We confirm the rule for whichever side you fly from.
• Wear dark clothes if you want photographs without your own reflection in the window.
• Weather and the pilot have the last word on the day. Book it early in the stay so there is room to move it.