Moremi Game Reserve sits at the heart of Botswana's Okavango Delta — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — offering exceptional Big Five safaris across a spectacular wilderness of waterways, floodplains, woodlands and channels teeming with extraordinary wildlife and birdlife.
Botswana: A Fifteen Day Tour
🗺️ Planning the Trip – Why We Went Self-Drive
When we sat down to plan our visit to Botswana, the first big question was how we were actually going to do it. The standard guided tour was an obvious option, perfectly decent and all that, but it didn’t quite sit right with us. We’re not enormous fans of being herded around on someone else’s schedule, and the idea of having the freedom to linger at a waterhole for an extra half-hour if something interesting was happening, or to press on early if we felt like it, was genuinely appealing. So we decided to go self-drive. Now, that decision comes with a fair few caveats, the most important being that the road conditions in Botswana are, to put it diplomatically, variable. The main tarmacked highways connecting the larger towns are perfectly serviceable, but venture off those and into the wilderness areas, the national parks and game reserves, and you will very quickly discover what a 4×4 vehicle was actually invented for. Sand, ruts, dry riverbeds, corrugated tracks that rattle your fillings loose – it’s all part of the deal, and honestly, rather good fun once you get your eye in.
We booked our tour through Onjamba Safaris (http://www.ondjamba.com.na/), a Namibia-based company that came highly recommended and turned out to be absolutely brilliant to deal with. They were patient, thorough, and reassuringly calm about all the “what ifs” that we threw at them. This was our first time in Africa – proper Africa, not just a resort in Cape Town – and we weren’t entirely sure what to expect. Using a company to plan it all out felt sensible, and we’d do the same again without hesitation. That said, having now done it, we’re confident that a seasoned traveller could book everything independently and save themselves a few quid in the process. The itinerary itself isn’t especially complex once you understand the geography. The local outfitter that Onjamba used to supply us with our vehicle on the ground in Botswana was Chobe 4×4 (https://www.chobe4x4.com/), and they were impressively professional. Their fleet consists of 2-door and 4-door Toyota Land Cruisers, which are the vehicle of choice for this kind of touring in southern Africa for very good reason. They’re robust, high-clearance, and parts are available virtually everywhere. When the vehicle was delivered to us, the team gave us a thorough two-hour briefing covering every switch, setting, and quirk of the truck, which for a couple of first-timers was absolutely invaluable. We’d have been fiddling with the diff lock for three days otherwise.
⛽ The Practical Stuff – Fuel, Provisions and Getting Around
Botswana is a big country. We mean genuinely, properly big. It covers around 581,730 square kilometres, making it roughly the size of France, yet it has a population of only about 2.6 million people. The upshot of all that is that you can drive for a very long time indeed without passing anything that resembles a town. That’s marvellous for the sense of wilderness and adventure, less marvellous when your fuel gauge is nudging towards the red. Doing your research before you set off each morning is absolutely essential. Most of the larger towns have supermarkets – Spar and Chobbies crop up fairly regularly and stock everything from cold drinks to tinned goods – and they’re well worth a stop. Once you leave the tarmac and enter the parks and reserves, however, you are on your own. There are no shops, no petrol stations, and at the more budget-oriented campsites, not much of anything. Some of the higher-end lodges have small shops or sell fuel, but you absolutely cannot rely on that. The golden rule is simple: fill the tank whenever you can, and carry extra in jerry cans. We carried two large cans and were very glad of them more than once.
✈️ Getting to Botswana – Entry Points and Border Crossings
There are several ways into Botswana depending on where you’re coming from and what else you’re doing in the region. We were on a broader tour of southern Africa at the time, having already spent time in Zimbabwe, so we crossed into Botswana overland near Victoria Falls. The border post is at Kazungula, where four countries converge in a rather improbable fashion: Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Zambia all meet at or very near the same point on the map. It’s one of the very few places in the world where four nations share a common border, and it makes for a slightly surreal experience at the immigration desk. We had been travelling in Zimbabwe in a rented vehicle and wisely decided not to attempt to take it across the border, largely because crossing an international frontier in Africa with a rental car is an exercise in paperwork, patience and mild despair. Changing vehicles with each country was the right call.
For those not already in the region, Kasane has its own small airport – Kasane Airport – which handles scheduled domestic and charter flights. The better-served alternative is to fly into Livingstone in Zambia or Victoria Falls Airport in Zimbabwe, both of which have decent international connections, and then arrange a transfer across the border, which is straightforward enough. Alternatively, if your plan is to start your Botswana adventure from the south or west, Maun is the gateway town to the Okavango Delta and has a surprisingly busy airport given its modest size. It’s served by several airlines from Johannesburg and is a perfectly sensible place to begin.
🏕️ Where to Stay – Lodges, Campsites and Sleeping Under the Stars
One of the things we rather liked about this trip was the variety of accommodation it threw at us. Our Land Cruiser came fitted with a roof tent – one of those pop-up canvas affairs that sits on a platform above the cab – and we could theoretically have used it every single night. It’s a perfectly comfortable way to sleep, assuming you don’t mind a bit of a climb and the occasional bat doing circuits above your head. In practice, though, we opted for a mix: some nights in proper lodge rooms with actual walls and functioning showers, other nights at campsites where the facilities ranged from excellent to rudimentary, and, on one memorable occasion, sleeping out on the open salt pan with nothing between us and the sky but a thin bivvy bag. More on that later. In the day-by-day itinerary below, we’ve included links to more detailed posts on each location, which should give you a better idea of specific accommodation options and how to book them.
🌊 DAY ONE – Arrive in Kasane – Chobe River Cruise
We spent our first two nights in Kasane, staying at the River View Lodge on the banks of the Chobe River. It’s a comfortable, well-positioned place and turned out to be an entirely decent introduction to Botswana. Kasane sits right on the edge of Chobe National Park, which holds the distinction of being Botswana’s first national park, formally proclaimed in 1967, and also its most biologically diverse. Geographically, it sits in the far north of the country, covering approximately 11,700 square kilometres of floodplain, riparian woodland, dry scrubland and grassland. In terms of size, it comes third in Botswana behind the colossal Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the Gemsbok National Park, but what it lacks in acreage it more than makes up for in wildlife density. It is reckoned to have one of the greatest concentrations of game anywhere in Africa, and its elephant population – estimated at somewhere between 50,000 and 120,000 individuals depending on the season and the methodology – is the largest herd on the entire continent. The park also supports substantial populations of lion, leopard, buffalo, sable antelope, wild dog and a quite extraordinary range of birdlife.
We arrived at lunchtime, which gave us the afternoon to stretch our legs and get our bearings. The lodge arranged a sunset cruise on the Chobe River, which forms the northern boundary of the national park, and we clambered aboard one of the flat-bottomed boats with a cold drink in hand, feeling rather pleased with ourselves. The river in this stretch is broad and unhurried, braided with channels and dotted with islands, and the wildlife along its banks was frankly extraordinary. Cape buffalo stood in great shaggy clusters in the shallows. Hippos surfaced and submerged with magnificent indifference. Crocodiles lounged on sandbanks with their mouths open in what we chose to interpret as contentment. And the elephants – good lord, the elephants. They were everywhere: wading through the water, stripping bark from riverside acacias, drinking in enormous family groups, and generally going about their business with the quiet authority of creatures that know perfectly well they are the largest land animals on Earth. The birdlife was equally impressive, with African fish eagles calling overhead, various herons stalking the shallows, and iridescent kingfishers shooting past like tiny guided missiles. A cracking first afternoon.
Stay overnight at River View Lodge in Kasane. For a full review of Kasane/Chobe National Park see our Blog Post: https://wp.me/pa6lB7-kzP
🌅 DAY TWO – Kasane – Dawn Game Drive in Chobe National Park
Day two began very early indeed. We were up before the sun, which at this latitude at that time of year rises at around six o’clock, and we were out on the tracks of Chobe National Park by first light. The dawn game drive is not simply a matter of tradition or romance, though it is certainly both of those things. It is genuinely the best time to see wildlife in the Chobe, and in most African parks for that matter. The reasons are partly thermal – large animals regulate their body temperature and tend to be most active in the cooler hours of early morning and late afternoon – and partly behavioural. Predators that have been hunting through the night are often still visible in the early hours, and the light is absolutely spectacular: soft, golden and directional in a way that makes everything look like a BBC nature documentary. We saw lion, buffalo and quite a few giraffe doing that slightly comical wide-legged drinking stance of theirs at the water’s edge. We returned to the lodge for breakfast feeling very smug.
The afternoon was more relaxed. We had our Land Cruiser delivered to us on this second day, and we spent a couple of hours with the Chobe 4×4 team going through the vehicle in detail. The briefing covered all the mechanical business – how to engage the low-range four-wheel drive, how to use the onboard air compressor to adjust tyre pressures for sand driving, the operation of the roof tent and the outdoor shower – as well as some very useful practical advice about driving in the bush. For instance: never assume a large puddle is shallow just because it looks like it. We filed that one away carefully. An afternoon game drive was available but we were happy enough to potter around the lodge, do a bit of admin and let it all sink in.
Stay overnight at River View Lodge in Kasane. For a full review of Kasane/Chobe National Park see our Blog Post: https://wp.me/pa6lB7-kzP
🦩 DAY THREE – Nata – Bird Sanctuary
Day three was a driving day, which gave us our first real taste of Botswana’s roads and our own navigation abilities. The destination was the small town of Nata, roughly 310 kilometres south of Kasane, and the drive took us about three and a half hours at a civilised pace. The road is tarmacked for most of the route and in reasonable condition, which was a relief, though there’s not a great deal to see along the way: flat, dry savannah, the occasional village, and very little traffic. We set off after breakfast and rolled into Nata around lunchtime, which is a perfectly sensible way to do it. This is also a good spot to refuel, as the town has a petrol station and a few shops.
We checked into the Nata Lodge, grabbed some lunch, and headed out to the Nata Bird Sanctuary in the afternoon. The sanctuary covers an area of 230 square kilometres and sits on the northeastern edge of the Sowa Pan, one of the two main pans that make up the vast Makgadikgadi wetlands complex. It’s located about 20 kilometres south of the town centre. The sanctuary was formally established in 1992, conceived as a community-based conservation project with the specific aim of protecting local wildlife, and particularly the bird species that depend on this unusual environment. What makes Nata genuinely significant – and this rather caught us by surprise – is that it is one of only three known nesting sites for flamingos in the whole of Africa. Both lesser and greater flamingos breed here, and when conditions are right and the pan floods after good rains, the numbers can be staggering. Tens of thousands of the things turning the shallow water pink. We didn’t see quite that spectacle, the timing wasn’t quite right, but the birdlife was still remarkable: pelicans, storks, various ducks and waders, and the occasional more exotic species that we had to look up in the field guide.
Stay overnight at the Nata Lodge. For a full review of Nata Bird Sanctuary see our Blog Post: https://wp.me/pa6lB7-kMy
🦏 DAY FOUR – Khama Rhino Sanctuary – Arrival
This was the longest driving day of the trip, and we won’t pretend otherwise. The total distance from Nata to the Khama Rhino Sanctuary came to around 421 kilometres, which at Botswana road speeds translates to approximately five and a half hours of driving, not counting stops. The route takes you south through Francistown, which is Botswana’s second-largest city after the capital Gaborone. Francistown has an interesting history – it was established in the late 19th century following the discovery of gold in the area, and for a brief period was one of the more significant mining towns in southern Africa, though the gold didn’t last. These days it’s a busy regional hub with supermarkets, fuel stations and the general infrastructure of a proper city, and we made good use of all three. The road between Nata and Francistown is, it must be said, not in great condition. The tarmac crumbles at the edges, there are potholes of varying ambition, and the heavy lorries that use this route seem to regard road markings as a suggestion rather than a rule. Overtaking them required a degree of commitment.
Beyond Francistown, the road improves somewhat. About 170 kilometres further south you pass through Palapye, a large town and another useful fuel stop. This was the last significant settlement we’d see for a couple of days, so we topped up accordingly. From Palapye it’s only another 70 kilometres or so to the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, passing through the town of Serowe, which is historically significant as the birthplace of Sir Seretse Khama, Botswana’s first president and independence leader, and the man after whom the sanctuary is named. We arrived with enough daylight left for a quick check-in and an early evening self-drive around the park, which was rather exciting because the roads inside the sanctuary are genuinely rough – deeply rutted with patches of deep sand – and it gave us our first real opportunity to properly test the Land Cruiser in four-wheel drive. We may have got slightly stuck in one particularly sandy section and had to engage low-ratio to get out. Character-building, as they say.
The Khama Rhino Sanctuary itself is a remarkable place. It was established in 1992 as a community-based wildlife project aimed specifically at rescuing the white and black rhinoceros from local extinction. Rhinos had been hunted to near-disappearance across much of Botswana in the preceding decades, and by the early 1990s their numbers were critically low. The sanctuary covers approximately 8,585 hectares of classic Kalahari Sandveld – that mixture of open thornbush, red sand and scattered acacia that defines so much of eastern and central Botswana. Alongside the rhinos, the sanctuary protects more than 30 other mammal species and upwards of 230 species of birds. It is managed in a genuinely community-oriented way, with local villages having a meaningful stake in its operation and income, which makes it one of the more successful examples of conservation-led rural development in Botswana.
Camp or stay in one of the chalets at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary. See our full blog post on visiting the Khama Rhino Sanctuary: https://wp.me/pa6lB7-kR7
🦏 DAY FIVE – Khama Rhino Sanctuary – A Full Day’s Exploring
Having arrived a little weary the previous afternoon, it was rather wonderful to wake up with a full day ahead of us at the sanctuary and no driving to speak of. We were up early again – the wildlife doesn’t care about your preferred lie-in time – and out on the tracks by first light. The early morning drive was the highlight: cooler air, excellent light, and animals that hadn’t yet retreated to shade. We found several white rhino during the morning session, including a mother with a calf that was quite breathtakingly close to the vehicle at one point. White rhinos, despite their somewhat alarming size and the general impression they give of being capable of considerable violence, are actually grazers and are generally calmer around vehicles than their black rhino cousins, who are browsers and considerably more unpredictable. The black rhino at Khama are present in smaller numbers and are shy enough that getting a good sighting requires a bit of patience. We eventually tracked one down near a waterhole in the late afternoon, which felt like a genuine win.
In between drives we had a good look around the visitor centre, which gives an excellent overview of the sanctuary’s history and conservation work. A face only a mother could love, as we noted when one particularly grumpy-looking bull rhino stared at us from about fifteen metres with what we can only describe as mild contempt. We also did a short guided walk in the middle of the day, which is not something you’d want to do near most large African predators but is perfectly reasonable in a sanctuary specifically managed for rhino. We strongly recommend booking at least two nights here – there is more to see than a single afternoon allows, and the communal campfire atmosphere in the evening is rather lovely.
See our full blog post on visiting the Khama Rhino Sanctuary: https://wp.me/pa6lB7-kR7
🏜️ DAY SIX – Central Kalahari Game Reserve – The Long Drive In
We could not resist sneaking in one final early morning game drive around the Khama Rhino Sanctuary before loading the Land Cruiser and pointing it northward. It felt like the right thing to do. We left after breakfast and headed north on the A14, which is actually a perfectly decent road in this stretch, and after about two hours (165 kilometres) we reached the mining town of Letlhakane. Letlhakane has grown considerably in recent years on the back of diamond mining – Botswana is the world’s largest producer of diamonds by value, a fact that has transformed this once impoverished country into one of Africa’s more prosperous nations since independence in 1966. The town now has a brand new shopping mall, which felt slightly surreal in the middle of the Kalahari, and is a good place to stock up on supplies and fuel. From Letlhakane, another 70 kilometres brings you to the tiny village of Rakops, which is your absolute last chance to fill the fuel tank before heading into the Central Kalahari. We did so very thoroughly indeed.
From Rakops the tarmac ends. The road into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve from this direction is approximately 48 kilometres from Rakops to the Matswere Gate, but that straight-line figure tells you absolutely nothing about the actual experience of driving it. In practice, those 48 kilometres took us about two and a half hours. The tracks are deeply rutted, cross-cut with dry riverbeds, and frequently covered in deep, fine sand that tends to grab at the wheels and requires a confident approach and appropriately reduced tyre pressure to navigate safely. We were very glad of the briefing we’d had. The 60 kilometres from the Matswere Gate to our campsite at Sunday Pan took another three hours on top of that. So yes, a long day. Total journey time from Khama to Sunday Pan campsite: approximately eleven to twelve hours, including the morning game drive. Worth it? Absolutely, unequivocally, yes.
The Central Kalahari Game Reserve was established in 1961 and covers some 52,000 square kilometres, making it one of the largest protected areas in the entire world – bigger than Switzerland, bigger than Denmark, bigger than you can really comprehend from a map. It was originally set aside partly as a protected homeland for the San Bushmen, one of the oldest human populations on Earth, who have inhabited this landscape for at least 20,000 years and possibly considerably longer. The reserve protects an extraordinary variety of Kalahari habitats: fossil riverbeds, open grassland, ancient salt pans and scrub woodland. Wildlife is present throughout, but the sheer scale of the place means it is spread thinly, and the dry-season waterholes and pans are where you’ll find the concentrations. Our campsite at Sunday Pan had wide, uninterrupted views across a vast ancient lakebed, and we were so far from the other two or three campsites in the reserve that we might as well have had the place to ourselves. As for the night sky – we have seen a lot of skies in a lot of places, but we have never, before or since, seen anything like the night sky in the Central Kalahari. The Milky Way wasn’t just visible; it was structural, a great luminous arch spanning from horizon to horizon. We stayed up far too late simply staring at it.
See our full blog post on visiting the Central Kalahari Game Reserve: https://wp.me/pa6lB7-kSW
🌌 DAY SEVEN – Central Kalahari Game Reserve – Second Night
We had the choice of spending a second night at Sunday Pan or moving on to a different campsite elsewhere in the reserve. The Central Kalahari has a number of designated campsites scattered across its vast interior – each one a small island of humanity in an ocean of wilderness. Some are better positioned than others for wildlife viewing, and the various pans act as natural congregation points for game particularly in the dry season when water elsewhere is scarce. We spent the morning exploring the tracks around Sunday Pan and Leopard Pan, where we found a remarkable gathering of mixed herbivores: gemsbok, wildebeest, springbok and zebra jostling for position at the waterhole, with a pair of black-backed jackals hovering at the edges hoping for an opportunity. It felt biblical. We stayed for a second night, reluctant to give up those stars.
See our full blog post on visiting the Central Kalahari Game Reserve: https://wp.me/pa6lB7-kSW
🦢 DAY EIGHT – Makgadikgadi National Park – Boteti River
Leaving the Central Kalahari required retracing our steps back through the Matswere Gate to Rakops, which as we’ve established is not a quick process. The 100 kilometres or so from Sunday Pan back to the gate took us around six hours, and then there was another 55 kilometres of rough track before we rejoined the main road. We filled up in Rakops – again – and then took the A14 north to Xhumaga, a journey of about 70 kilometres on tarmac that took a mere 45 minutes and felt frankly indecent after the previous few days. Xhumaga sits on the Boteti River, which forms the western boundary of Makgadikgadi Pans National Park, and this is where we spent the night at the Boteti River Camp. The Boteti is a fascinating river: it drains the Okavango Delta system and flows intermittently depending on upstream rainfall in Angola and Zambia. In good years it flows strongly; in dry years it can reduce to a series of pools. Either way, it attracts astonishing numbers of animals and birds, and watching a flock of white pelicans manoeuvring on a sandbank in the late afternoon light was one of those moments that just makes you glad you went to the bother of organising the whole thing.
See our full blog post on visiting the Makgadikgadi National Park: https://wp.me/pa6lB7-kUc
🌳 DAY NINE – Planet Baobab
Our destination for day nine was Planet Baobab, a resort that turned out to be rather more charming than its slightly self-consciously named might suggest. It’s only about 100 kilometres from the Boteti River Camp, which by the standards of the previous few days was practically next door. There are two ways to get there: the sensible option is to take the main tarmac road, which will deliver you in about an hour and a half with no drama. The more interesting option is to drive through the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park itself, following the tracks along the western side of the Boteti River. We chose the latter, naturally. To enter the park from this side you need to cross the Boteti, which during the rainy season (roughly November to April) can be a serious undertaking: the river runs high and fast, and vehicle crossings are not possible. A small local ferry operates during these periods, which by all accounts is a memorable experience in its own right, the kind of thing that ends up being the story you tell at dinner parties for years. We were there in the dry season, however, and drove across a ford without incident, though it was deep enough to be exciting. Once across, we followed the tracks through the park, stopping to drive down onto the sandy riverbank, which feels like your own private beach except that the lifeguard is a Nile crocodile.
Planet Baobab itself is a lovely place. There is a proper campsite for those who prefer it, but we opted for one of the rondavels – the traditional circular thatched huts that are a staple of southern African accommodation and are rather more comfortable than they look from the outside. The resort is named for the magnificent baobab trees that dot the surrounding landscape, some of which are truly ancient. Baobab trees can live for over a thousand years, and the specimens around Planet Baobab have a presence that goes beyond the merely botanical. They look like something that fell from the sky and landed upside down, all barrel trunk and stumpy branches, and in the golden afternoon light they are quite beautiful. The resort offers a nature walk and several other activities, and has a good pool and a perfectly decent bar. We needed both.
See our full blog post on visiting the Makgadikgadi National Park: https://wp.me/pa6lB7-kUc
⭐ DAY TEN – Meerkats and Sleeping Under the Stars on the Salt Pans
Day ten was, without question, our favourite day of the entire trip. We’d have a difficult time picking a highlight from fifteen days of extraordinary experiences, but if pressed, this was it. The main reason we’d chosen Planet Baobab specifically as a stopover was that they offer an extraordinary overnight sleepout experience on the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, and having read about it in advance we were absolutely determined to do it.
The Makgadikgadi is a series of salt pans in northeastern Botswana that together form one of the largest salt flat systems on the planet, covering roughly 12,000 square kilometres. They are the remnants of an ancient superlake called Lake Makgadikgadi, which existed until somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago and at its peak covered an area larger than Switzerland. The lake dried up as the regional climate shifted, leaving behind this otherworldly landscape of white crystalline salt stretching in every direction to the horizon. In the dry season, the surface is hard and perfectly flat, and the silence is the deepest we’ve ever experienced. In the wet season, a thin film of water transforms the pans into a mirror that reflects the sky, and enormous flocks of flamingos – sometimes hundreds of thousands of them – arrive to breed.
We had opted for the full ATV (all-terrain vehicle) package, which began with a game drive vehicle from Planet Baobab tracking through the National Park. About an hour in, we stopped to track a family of meerkats, and this was magnificent. Meerkats are sociable, diurnal, and completely unintimidated by humans – at least in areas where they’re habituated to visitors – and watching a family group at their sentinel duties, taking it in turns to stand bolt upright on a termite mound scanning for hawks, was genuinely delightful. From there we drove a short distance to a small enterprise that hires out ATVs, clambered aboard our respective machines (neither of us had driven an ATV before, which is probably information that would have been sensible to share earlier), and headed out onto the salt pan. For approximately an hour we drove across a surface so flat and so white and so utterly featureless that it was occasionally difficult to remember which direction we’d come from. It was magnificent in the most elemental way.
We made camp – and we use the term loosely – at a spot deep on the pan. This was not camping in the sense of tents and sleeping bags. This was a bivvy bag laid on the salt, a folding chair, a small camp table with a lamp on it, and nothing else. No tent, no walls, nothing between you and the African sky but a very thin layer of Gore-Tex. Once the sun had gone down and the temperature dropped, the stars emerged in a display that rivalled even the Central Kalahari. The Milky Way was so bright it cast a faint shadow. We lay on our backs on one of the most ancient lake beds on Earth, under a sky that has looked exactly like this since long before our species existed, and it felt rather appropriate. In our opinion, if you can possibly afford this excursion, do it without hesitation.
See our full blog post on visiting the Makgadikgadi National Park: https://wp.me/pa6lB7-kUc
🏙️ DAY ELEVEN – Overnight in Maun
After the most extraordinary night’s sleep we’d had in years – or possibly the least comfortable, it’s a matter of perspective – we woke on the salt pan to a sunrise that turned the entire landscape pink and gold and utterly surreal. A very early morning light breakfast was served out there on the pan, which sounds romantic and was in fact both romantic and rather cold, before we drove the ATVs back to the small farm and transferred back to the Planet Baobab vehicle. We returned to the resort, had a long and deeply appreciated shower, ate a second and considerably more substantial breakfast, and then set off for Maun.
The drive from Planet Baobab to Maun is around 200 kilometres, all on the tarmacked road, and took us about two to two and a half hours, which after the terrain of the previous few days felt almost motorway-like. Maun is an interesting town – the name translates roughly as “the place of reeds” in Setswana, and it sits at the southeastern edge of the Okavango Delta. For most of its history it was a small cattle post and administrative centre, but since the growth of tourism from the 1980s onwards it has become the primary staging point for visits to the delta and is now a proper town with a decent range of hotels, restaurants, supermarkets and – crucially – an international airport. We arrived in the afternoon, sorted ourselves out, did some shopping, and got a proper night’s sleep in a bed. Lovely.
🐆 DAY TWELVE – Moremi Game Reserve
From Maun we headed north and east into the Moremi Game Reserve, a journey of approximately 125 kilometres that involves a mix of tarmac roads, gravel tracks and some rather testing sandy stretches in the later stages. Moremi was gazetted as a game reserve in 1963, making it one of the first areas in Africa to be set aside for conservation by the local community rather than by a colonial government. It covers around 5,000 square kilometres and occupies the eastern part of the Okavango Delta, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the planet’s most remarkable ecosystems. The Okavango is an inland delta – one of very few in the world – formed by the Okavango River flowing down from the Angolan highlands and spreading across the flat Kalahari sands to form a vast network of channels, lagoons, floodplains and papyrus beds before gradually evaporating and soaking into the sand. Unlike most rivers, the Okavango never reaches the sea. It simply disappears into the desert, which is the sort of thing that rivers should probably be told not to do but is, in this case, the reason why one of the most biodiverse places on Earth exists where it does.
Moremi offers some of the finest game viewing in Africa by any reasonable measure. We stopped at the Khwai Conservancy, which lies adjacent to the northeastern boundary of the reserve, and stayed at the Khwai Guesthouse, which has several comfortable chalets and is an excellent base. They also offer guided game drives, which we’d recommend strongly for at least one of your days here. The reserve can be confusing to navigate – there are numerous tracks and channels and it’s surprisingly easy to end up somewhere you didn’t intend to be – and having a knowledgeable local guide who knows where the leopards have been hanging about and which waterhole the wild dogs are using is worth considerably more than the cost of the hire. In the rainy season, navigation becomes genuinely challenging in places, as tracks flood and surfaces become unpredictable.
See our full blog post on visiting the Moremi Game Reserve: https://wp.me/sa6lB7-moremi
🐘 DAY THIRTEEN – Moremi Game Reserve – Second Day
We gave ourselves a full second day in and around Moremi and the Khwai Conservancy, and we were very glad we did. The conservancy itself – which is a community-managed wildlife area outside the formal park boundaries – turned out to be outstanding for game. We had a long and very productive morning drive that produced elephant, hippo, giraffe, zebra, impala, red lechwe (a beautiful semi-aquatic antelope that’s particularly associated with the Okavango), and a distant but unmistakable lion lolling under a sausage tree in the manner of a cat that has eaten recently and intends to do very little about it. The afternoon produced a highlight we hadn’t especially been expecting: a pack of African wild dogs resting in the shade near a termite mound. African wild dogs are one of the most endangered large carnivores on the continent, with perhaps only 6,000 individuals remaining across the whole of Africa, and the Okavango ecosystem is one of their remaining strongholds. Watching them interact – all that intense social grooming and the excited vocalising that precedes a hunt – was something rather special. A second night at Khwai Guesthouse.
See our full blog post on visiting the Moremi Game Reserve: https://wp.me/sa6lB7-moremi
🌳 DAY FOURTEEN – Savuti – Chobe National Park
From Moremi, the logical move was to head north back towards Kasane and our exit from Botswana. There are two broad options here: a very long single day of driving back to Kasane on some genuinely difficult tracks, or breaking the journey with a night in the Savuti area, which lies within the northern section of Chobe National Park. We chose the latter, and it turned out to be one of the better decisions we made on the whole trip. The Savuti Campsite sits on the banks of the Savuti Channel, a watercourse with one of the more peculiar hydrological histories in Africa. The channel connects the Linyanti River system to the Savuti Marsh, but it has a documented and rather baffling habit of flowing, then ceasing to flow, then flowing again, apparently independent of rainfall levels. It ran dry in the 1880s, then again between the 1940s and 1957, and again from the 1960s to 1985. It has been flowing more or less steadily since then, but nobody is entirely sure why. There are theories involving seismic activity causing subtle shifts in the gradient of the land, but it remains imperfectly understood. What the fluctuations have left behind is a landscape of extraordinary character: dead trees – ancient camel thorns and leadwoods that died when the water receded decades ago – standing silver and skeletal against the sky in their thousands, creating an almost gothic silhouette at dawn and dusk that is very beautiful in a slightly melancholy way.
The Savuti area is known for big cats – lions in particular have been well studied here over the decades, and the local prides have a documented history of taking on and killing elephants, which is unusual behaviour for lions and has been the subject of considerable scientific interest. We didn’t see any elephant-killing while we were there, we’re pleased to report, but we did have a very large herd of elephants wander through the campsite at sunset, which is either thrilling or mildly alarming depending on your disposition. We decided to regard it as thrilling. There are some expensive private lodges in the area, but we camped at the Savuti Campsite (https://www.africanreservations.com/Savuti-Campsite), which is basic but well positioned and has the significant advantage of not costing the earth.
🏁 DAY FIFTEEN – Return to Kasane
The final day was a relatively gentle one by the standards of the preceding fortnight. From Savuti to Kasane is approximately 161 kilometres. The first 100 kilometres follows the sandy tracks through northern Chobe National Park – game-rich, visually stunning, occasionally hair-raising in the softer sections – which took us about three hours. Then the tracks give way to tarmac for the final 60 kilometres back to Kasane, which at proper road speeds takes about 45 minutes and felt like arriving back in civilisation after a very long and rewarding expedition. We spent the last afternoon in Kasane sorting through approximately four thousand photographs, doing laundry, and sitting on the terrace with a cold drink, reviewing what had been, without any doubt, the most remarkable two weeks either of us had ever spent anywhere. Botswana is extraordinary. Go.
Best Time to Visit Botswana
Botswana’s climatic pattern is typical of southern Africa, although its rainfall is less than countries further east. The rains in Botswana come mostly between December and March when average minimum temperatures are in the low 20°s. Some days will be bright and sunny, some will have afternoon thunderstorms, and some will just be grey.
As with Namibia, April and May in Botswana are generally lovely, with the sky clear and the landscape green. Night temperatures start to drop during these months, especially in the Kalahari. Note that places in and around the Okavango tend to have less extreme, more moderate temperatures than the drier areas of the Kalahari.
From June to August the night-time temperatures in drier areas can be close to freezing, but it warms up rapidly during the day when the sky is usually clear and blue. It’s now very much ‘peak season’ for most safari areas: the land is dry in most areas so the animals congregate around the few available water sources.
This continues into September and October, when temperatures climb again, drying the landscapes and concentrating the game even more. This is the best time for big game safaris – although October can feel very hot, with maximum temperatures sometimes approaching 40°C.
November is difficult to predict, as it can sometimes be a continuation of October’s heat, whilst sometimes it’s cooled by the first rains; it’s always an interesting month.
Botswana – Month-by-Month
Visiting Botswana in January
January is hot, with long sunny spells punctuated by short, tempestuous thunderstorms when it can be a good idea to settle back under canvas with a drink to watch the lightning illuminate the sky. This time of year sees migratory birds breeding and the young of the grazers growing quickly on the lush grass, giving predators the runaround.
Visiting Visiting Botswana in February
The mercury can soar, with continued sunshine and dramatic storms that make for photogenic skies. The Central Kalahari starts to come to life, with the grasslands enticing plains game. Ripening fruit sees many different species congregate around the trees in search of a sweet meal.
Visiting Botswana in March
The rains start to ease off, and very hot, drier days and nights are the rule in March.
Visiting Botswana in April
While days continue to be hot and sunny, the nights start to get cooler in April, making sleeping more comfortable while still allowing plenty of scope for sitting outside in the evenings with a sundowner. Breeding season for antelope is underway, and the males are busy butting heads and strutting around as they strive to impress the females.
Visiting Botswana in May
The end of the rains sees the mercury start to fall, and days are no longer quite as furnace-like. Evenings can be cool, so it’s a good idea to pack a jacket for night safaris.
Visiting Botswana in June
Midwinter in Botswana is nothing like it might be in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, so you can expect beautifully warm days without being sweltering, and only the nights approach anything close to freezing. The shrinking waterholes are the focus for both prey and predators alike, making game easy to spot.
Visiting Botswana in July
Warmer days abound, although early mornings and evenings are still chilly. Despite it now being the dry season, the floodwaters begin to rise as the water filters through from the central uplands of Angola. This is a rewarding time to get out on the water in a mokoro as the channels fill up and you can reach further day-by-day.
Visiting Botswana in August
Botswana starts to heat up again and it is unusual to experience a night-time frost at this time of year, while days can be very hot.
Visiting Botswana in September
You can expect sparkling blue skies, bright sunshine and hot temperatures during the day, with the evenings becoming balmy. The ground is dusty as the rains recede into distant memory, and the plains game face a constant battle for survival as they are harried by predators.
Visiting Botswana in October
The heat increases in October, and activities are timed to avoid the middle part of the day when the thermometer can show above 40°C. The annual catfish run sees countless numbers of them migrating upstream to avoid falling water levels, devouring smaller fish as they go.
Visiting Botswana in November
It is hot around the clock, and for the first part of the month the land is usually dry and dusty, until the rains come to soak up the dust and bring greenery back to the landscape. Plenty of young are born in this period, and are consequently picked off by the attendant predators.
Visiting Botswana in December
Thunderstorms return to Botswana and bursts of rain nourish the grass, which in turn allow the newborns to gain weight quickly and stand a fighting chance against the predators.
More to Explore
