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The buffalo bull had been killed in the night. Now, only the horned head and a black bag of bones remained at the scene of the crime; but the butchers, the Kutandala lion pride, were not far away, sleeping off their blowout feast in the thorny thickets of North Luangwa National Park.

We went looking for them, walking quietly through the thick bush, talking in whispers. In front was Tryson Nkhoma, our armed ranger; then came Rod Tether, my guide; then me.

Suddenly, Tryson froze. Rod pointed. And there were the lions - an adult lioness and three young males with rag-tag manes, resting on the far side of a clearing. We moved closer, more slowly now, approaching obliquely until no more than 100ft of open ground lay between us, and it occurred to me that a lion could cover that distance in about three seconds flat.

For maybe five minutes, we stood there. We watched them and they watched us, until eventually the three youngsters switched off. One by one, their heads dropped and they began to doze, panting in the windless heat. But not so the lioness. Her whole body language said "Don't mess with me", and even when we backed away, I could still feel her pale eyes upon me, as if she was looking deep into my soul.

WALKING IN lion country is a good way to increase your attention span; and when it comes to foot safaris, there is nowhere better than Zambia. After all, this is the country where the old-fashioned, Dr Livingstone-style safari was reinvented.

How fast the world has moved on since Livingstone died here in Chitambo in the Bangweulu Wetlands in 1873. Today's travellers come prepared for everything Africa can throw at them. They pop anti- malaria pills, zoom in by plane, hit the bush in padded Toyota Land Cruisers and chill out in five-star luxury lodges.

Yet still there are those who hanker for a more down-to-earth safari experience - one that brings you face to face with nature on level terms - showering under the stars, travelling on foot, the way it used to be. And that is what Zambia offers. It is unexpurgated Africa: wild, vast and hugely underrated. Thirty per cent of the country is national parkland, and while neighbouring countries have been rocked by turmoil, Zambia has been quietly ticking along, greeting visitors with the warm est welcome south of the equator.

Its most celebrated slice of wildlife real estate is the Luangwa Valley, an immense offshoot of the Great Rift Valley. Through it runs the Luangwa River, coiling for 500 miles past sand bars as big as Cornish beaches and riverine forests of great blowsy trees. During the rains, it bursts its banks; in the dry season, it flows sluggishly but never fails to provide water for the hippos - 40 for every mile of river - and the monster crocodiles that bask on its banks with jaws agape.

Most visitors stay in South Luangwa, a national park the size of Wales. There is a score of bush camps and safari lodges here, but tourism remains low-key and low- impact, with the accent on walking safaris, accompanied by some of Africa's most bush-savvy guides.

Foremost among them is Robin Pope. I first met him in the late 1970s when he was a young protégé of the late Norman Carr, the game warden who pioneered the concept of walking safaris right here in South Luangwa. Diffident, unassuming, quiet, in London he could pass for a librarian; but in Zambia, in his faded shorts and beaten-up, wide-brimmed bush hat, he is the consummate professional safari companion.

Pope's camp, Tena Tena, is generally acknowledged to be the best in the valley. On one side is the Luangwa River, its banks echoing constantly to the bellowing of hippos. On the other is a small lagoon where, during my stay, I watched bushbuck and elephant come to drink; and once, in the small hours, I heard the hacksaw cough of a prowling leopard ripping through the darkness.

At Tena Tena they get up early, to walk while the air is still cool. As the sun rose, we passed a palm tree in which a pair of red-necked falcons were nesting, then cut across a dried-up oxbow lagoon, its bed pot-holed by the giant footprints of hippo and elephant. On the other side, Robin found fresh leopard tracks in the dust. Was this the cat that I had heard in the night?

We walked on, and soon the long grass had closed around us, tall enough to hide an elephant. This is what the Zambians call "adrenaline grass" - for obvious reasons - and I was reassured to see that Isaiah Nyrenda, our game scout, carried a .458 Parker-Hale rifle, whose bullets were the size of chipolatas and would, if required, stop a charging tusker. But such incidents are almost unheard of in the valley.

I asked Robin about the dangers posed by walking in big-game country, and which animals he most respected. "Elephant and hippo," he said, without hesitation. "They're the ones you have to watch. Elephants because of their sheer size and unpredictability; hippos because they have this habit of hiding in thick bush. In all my years in the valley, I've only had to drop two animals. Both were hippos."

Like all true professionals, he appeared utterly relaxed, yet never dropped his guard. His senses were alert to the wildlife in whatever guise it might appear: a flash of wings; the bark of a bushbuck; a flick of an ear in the long grass.

But what I found most striking of all was his total respect for nature - like the day we went game-driving and found a leopard. She was resting on the banks of an oxbow lagoon, and for an hour we sat and watched her, while the sun passed down and the light turned to gold, and the wood doves called above our heads. When at last she wandered off, we could easily have followed, but Robin shook his head. "I think we'll leave her now," he said quietly. "Don' t want to push her too hard."

Later, after sundowners by the river, we drove home in the dark with the spotlight on, picking out the bright eyes of Luangwa's night shift: porcupines, mongooses, slim-line genets. And soon afterwards, we came upon a male lion padding down the road.

We stopped, and the lion circled around us, then lay down no more than 30ft away and roared and roared, loud enough to shake the sides of our vehicle. Surely, I thought, Africa doesn't come any wilder.

BUT THAT was before I flew up to North Luangwa to walk with the lions of Kutandala.

When Rod Tether met me at the dusty airstrip, we drove for an hour down a rutted track, then parked on the banks of the Mwaleshi River. "It's boots-off time," he said. "The camp is on the other side. We won't need the Land Rover again until you leave."

Unlike the Luangwa, the Mwaleshi flows crystal clear and is, Rod assured me as we waded across, virtually croc- and hippo-free. "Although we did have a rogue hippo last week," he added. "It demolished one of the deck chairs that we had left on the beach. Then it defecated on it for good measure, just to make its feelings known."

North Luangwa is serious wilderness. Imagine a park the size of Cornwall with no roads, no permanent buildings and no people except for the likes of Rod and Guz, his wife. Their camp, Kutandala, is one of only three in the entire park and accommodates no more than six guests at a time. It's a place for safari purists. "I'm a Luddite when it comes to bush camps," Rod confesses. Not for him the glitzy lodges with their safari-chic furnishings. Instead, my home for the next three nights was a rustic affair of reeds and thatch, with rush mats on a bare earth floor and a shower open to the sky.

Every day began the same. At dawn, a tea tray was brought to my bedside. The bamboo blinds - lowered at night to deter lions and hyenas - were rolled up, and there was Africa beyond the waist-high wall at the end of my bed: a wide-screen vision of a red dawn sky, the river flowing, and a frieze of woods beyond. Then off we would walk beside the Mwaleshi to see what we could find.

There was always something new. Where the lions had been the day before, a column of Cookson's wildebeest were now galloping down to drink, and two hunch-backed shadows were crossing the river. " Chimbwi ," said Tryson. "Spotted hyenas," Rod translated.

"There are still local people who believe that witch doctors can assume the shape of a hyena and go flying through the night," said Rod.

I didn't see any flying hyenas. But I did spot a bat hawk, a dark brown falcon with mad yellow eyes, scything through the dusk on switchblade wings. That was on my last evening, at the end of our last walk, as we sat and bathed our feet in the river, nibbling canapés, drinking champagne and trying to pick out the moons of Jupiter through Rod's telescope.

Does life get any better? I doubt it.

Brian Jackman travelled to Zambia as a guest of Tim Best Travel