The Rift Valley floor at the lakeshore is almost at sea level but the bordering plateau rises to between 1600ft and 5000ft.  The highest peaks in Malawi touch 10,000ft while the Lower Shire Valley (pronounced Shiray) in the south is at a meagre 500 ft.  These great contrasts help to make the landscape of Malawi one of the most varied in all Africa.  The scenery, including its cloak of vegetation, presents an ever-changing vista.

Such is the great size of Lake Malawi and the narrowness of the Rift Valley, that there is little space for lakeshore plains.  In north Malawi, between Nkhata Bay and Livingstonia, the Ruarwe Scarp marks the very edge of the Rift Valley, plunging over 5000ft from the Viphya Highlands straight into the lake.  Further south, in central Malawi, there are plains but rarely do these extend more than 15 miles from the shoreline.  Here and there are floodplains, often farmed but occasionally flooded in the rainy season.  Shallow depressions, called dambos, characterise some of the lowlands.

The Lake itself is a great inland sea, some 360 miles north to south and up to 50 miles wide.  Much of the time this tideless, freshwater lake gently laps the golden beaches which surround it.  But on rare occasions it can show its anger in a fierce storm.  Its fish-rich waters are home to the mbuna, colourful tropical fish in greater abundance here than anywhere else in the world.

To the south, Lake Malawi drains into the River Shire which flows over 300 miles along the Rift Valley floor.  On its way to join the Zambezi, the Shire tumbles over rapids and falls as well as flowing quietly across broad plains.

Away from the Lake and the Shire Lowlands, much of Malawi is part of the Central Africa Plateau.  This gently undulating land, where not farmed, has a natural vegetation of deciduous woodland – brachystegia, acacia or combretum.

Rising to even greater heights are Malawi's true mountains: the whaleback plateau of Nyika and the mountainous Viphya in the north, the Dowa Highlands in the centre and, in the south, the two great massifs of Zomba and, highest of all, Mulanje, Central Africa's grandest peak reaching over 10,000ft.