Kumbali Country Lodge

The lodge impresses with its serene location, spacious and clean rooms, friendly staff, and excellent amenities including gardens, swimming pool, and restaurant. However, some guests mentioned the need for better room maintenance.

We booked a deluxe room as a treat for our last night in Malawi and even on the way there we were told how celebrities stay there and that "everyone wants to get to Kumbali"....sadly our stay did not match the expectation. The location is good with a decent garden overlooking the "game reserve"; the pool is small and dirty. Our room was large with very dated furniture (which we expected having seen photos) but the safe did not work, the main door did not open and close well, the bathroom was really old and mouldy. The shower was a trickle of very hot water (no cold water would come out of the tap). The outdoor chairs on the small terrace were covered in bat droppings (we tried flipping the cushions but these were covered in droppings on both sides). We thought at least it is a quiet place...wrong again as one side of the room overlooks the area where the dogs are kept overnight (barking) and the kitchen so there was noise late in the evening and early in the morning. The wifi was good. We ordered a snack when we arrived and it was served in half an hour; it was excellent in taste. We enquired about dinner and were told it started at 7 pm. When we got to the restaurant at 7 pm we noticed that the menu stated a 30 minutes preparation time for most of the dishes. We were the only table in the restaurant. We ordered a veggie burger and a quesadilla. It took one hour and twenty minutes to get the food! The food was actually very good but after waiting for so long we just wanted to finish. Breakfast was a sad affair, with an empty buffet table...we ordered scrambled eggs hoping it would be "quick" ...they arrived in half an hour. The disappointing thing was that we were asked about our stay only after we settled the bill; as we walked out to the waiting car, a man approached us saying he was the manager and that he "overheard our feedback" and wanted to reassure us he will take appropriate measures. We found this even more upsetting as one would expect the manager to step in when hearing a customer feedback and maybe offer some gesture of goodwill. I suggest they follow the lead of many restaurant in Malawi and ask guests to order their food in advance. I also suggest the managers to visit some other lodge (Kefi in Zomba or Blue Zebra on the lake for example) and get some inspiration. And please clean the bat droppings. For us this was a very expensive stay with no reason and I wish we stayed somewhere else.

Our last night in Malawi we stayed at the Kumbali. We immediately started walking around to enjoy the beautiful surroundings and to take pictures. How beautiful it was. We also saw many monkeys. After a drink we enjoyed a delicious dinner. The next morning we were given a tour to the banana plantation. That was very fun and educational. Unfortunately we had to quickly move on to the airport. We would have liked to stay longer