The Mushroom Farm Eco Lodge

The Mushroom Farm is a beautiful eco-lodge at an altitude of 1,100 m and located near the fascinating, historical mission town of Livingstonia in Malawi. We offer a friendly and comfortable place to stay for international travellers, locals and expats, while they explore the very best part of Malawi. The Mushroom Farm is uniquely located in a stunning cliff-top location within native bushland and boasts spectacular views across the Rift Valley, Lake Malawi and Tanzania.

We offer beautiful, spacious and comfortably furnished rooms as well as shady campsites and tents for hire, including bedding. Our new room features a private bathroom and a beautiful open-air shower overlooking The Great Rift Valley. The specially built campsites for overlanders include rooftop tents, barbecue areas, picnic tables and taps nearby.

There is a great restaurant with an extensive menu, serving a delicious international menu ranging from steaks and burgers to Mexican tortillas and Vietnamese rice paper rolls. We also have steaming hot showers and our own spring water.

The Mushroom Farm offers comfortably furnished double and twin rooms and many shady campsites. All linen is supplied and mosquito nets are positioned above every bed. All the rooms are unique and are designed to take in the best of the views across the lake and the bush surrounds. They are also designed to be of low impact and blend naturally into the surrounding environment. We have used many traditional building techniques, such as cob walls and floors and grass thatch, as well as using plantation timber as much as possible to reduce the clearing of local forests. The camp is also solar powered.

The walk from the Mushroom Farm to Livingstonia is a moderate one-and-a-half hour's stroll through farmland and villages. The town itself is a living museum, the architecture distinctly Scottish, and many buildings are protected by the Department of Antiquities. The mission sprawls over a small plateau and people come to visit the museum at the Stone House that records the long walks that Dr Livingstone took, and the troubled history of the missionaries that came later.

The church and its stained glass window of the good doctor is an interesting place to visit too. The town has a small market with typical Malawian produce and a few grocery stores. Alcohol is not served anywhere in the mission. It is a quiet and conservative place, livened up by the hundreds of secondary and university students that board there.