Expert Reviews
A million miles away
It's incredible how a slight delay can lead to some unforgettable moments. Our landing at the Kwando concession camp In Northern Botswana was anything but ordinary. Instead of the usual routine, we found ourselves circling above, waiting for a herd of reluctant elephants to clear the runway. Despite...
A blast from the past
Long before dinosaurs ruled the Earth, the semi-arid grasslands of South Africa’s Karoo were once verdant swamps, not unlike that which you’ll find today in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Strange beasts, such as big-headed herbivorous dicynodonts and wolf-like predatory therapsids, roamed these...
Escape the Crowds on Safari
The 130,000-hectare Selinda Private Game Reserve is part of a much larger contiguous conservation area, which includes the Okavango Delta and the Linyanti Swamps. As such, it’s alive with wildlife, and whenever I go there, I always have amazing encounters with Africa’s iconic creatures. Selinda...
Heaven on Earth
“A nice place for ducks.” That’s what my first impression was of Botswana’s Okavango Delta as I flew above it in a small airplane. There was water everywhere. The flat expanse of flooded land below was a world of olive-colored islets, pea-green water channels, and sky-blue expanses of...
Endless Space & Seasonal Plenty
Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve (often abbreviated to CKGR) covers a staggering 52,800km2, making it Africa’s second largest national park. With this amount of space – it’s larger than the Netherlands – you might expect crowds of safari-goers. In fact, this is one of the least...
The Jewel in Botswana’s Crown
This is my favourite place in all of Africa, a breathtakingly beautiful watery wonderland. It is an expensive trip, with mainly high-end lodges and access by charter flight, but in my opinion worth every dollar. Depending on location and time of year, lodges offer a mix of game drives, nature walks,...
Salt Pans & Silence
Nxai Pan makes a great contrast to Botswana’s greener, wetter protected areas to the west. Pronounced “nye”, this is a vast open grassy area with scrubby vegetation (the shimmering white salt pans are further south in Makgadikgadi). After the rains there can be good numbers of herbivores,...
Wild Botswana
This is a vast private concession with just two lodges. It is one of the wildest, most pristine places I have had the privilege of visiting in all of Africa. The two lodges have different settings: Lagoon has a beautiful position overlooking water and Labala borders more open grasslands. Kwando’s...
Magical mountain gorillas
I’m fortunate through my work to have tracked mountain gorillas six times and it never disappoints – it is the ultimate wildlife encounter. In Volcanoes National Park it’s a very smooth and well-managed operation, with strict rules to ensure gorillas aren’t adversely affected by visitors....
Wild Arid Heartland
Situated in the heart of Botswana, the CKGR is vast. It is a semi-desert with much of it covered in acacia scrub together with a series of open pans. At first sight the CKGR can seem rather underwhelming. You come here for the wilderness experience, rather than expecting to see lots of wildlife....
Wild Botswana
Moremi Game Reserve occupies the eastern side of the Okavango Delta. It is a stunningly beautiful mix of seasonal floodplains, swamps, palm trees, grasslands and open water. Moremi is home to the Big 5 – although you’d be very lucky indeed to see a rhino. However, it is “predator central”...
A cultural treasure.
Mapungubwe National Park is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the cultural significance of Mapungubwe Hill. In the 1930’s, artefacts found here proved that Mapungubwe was at the centre of southern Africa’s first formal, urban society – centuries before white man’s arrival. I...
Land of Giants
Mashatu is a privately owned reserve in the Tuli Block in eastern Botswana, but is most easily accessed from South Africa. There are only a handful of lodges, so with fewer vehicles you can spend longer at sightings. Mashatu Game Reserve is nicknamed ‘Land of the Giants’ after the eponymous...
Madikwe: An Exclusive Big-Five Safari
Hard up against the Botswana border, Madikwe Game Reserve is one of South Africa’s most rewarding safari experiences. In wildlife terms, the Big Five are relatively easy to see – I saw rhino, buffalo and elephant all drinking from the same waterhole at the same time on one wonderful late...
Wild dogs and Wildlife Abundance
Northern Botswana’s attractive and remote 150,000 hectare Selinda Game Reserve is a private concession located in the wildlife heartland of northern Botswana. The reserve benefits from the seasonal flows of the ancient Selinda Spillway, which links the Okavango Delta to the floodplains of the...
Limpopo revival
One of the largest privately owned game reserves in Southern Africa and incorporating three major private concessions, Northern Tuli Game Reserve is a surprisingly well-kept secret in a country blessed with abundant natural resources. Straddling the Shashe, Motloutse and Limpopo Rivers, which serve...
A Convenient Introduction to Botswana
Located a mere 10km south of the capital, the fenced Mokolodi Nature Reserve provides a pleasant alternative whenever you find yourself having to spend time in Gaborone. At just 3,700 hectares, its small size and rehabilitated cattle farms are a far cry from the wild, wilderness areas that dominate...
Carnivore Central
The 32,000 hectare Mashatu private game reserve, in the heart of Tuli Block, is quite rightly renowned for its big cat sighting and burgeoning elephant population, but there’s a lot more to this incredible place. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see lion, leopard and cheetah in a single game drive...
Dazzling Zebra and Shimmering Salt
Botswana’s great saltpans – Nxai, Ntwetwe and Sua – comprise an expansive region of northern Botswana known as Makgadikgadi: an ethereal and austere landscape like no other. Extending from the wildlife-rich Boteti River in the west to enormous Ntwetwe Pan – the largest of the saltpans – in...
Dynamite comes in Small Packages
Although only a short hop from Gaborone, Khutse Game Reserve remains surprisingly remote and uncrowded, especially outside of school holidays and the peak safari season. One of a chain of parks that together protect vast swathes of the Kalahari, Khutse is a tiny reserve by Botswana standards, yet it...
Cry of the Kalahari
The Central Kalahari, ‘land of thirst’, is a parched wilderness and primeval landscape of sand, stone, grasslands and thorn-scrub. Peppered with the ubiquitous oryx and echoing nightly with the primordial roars of the king of the African savannah, this iconic desert dreamscape is like no other...
The Zambezi Region: Wildlife’s Next Frontier
It wasn’t that long ago that the Zambezi region (Caprivi Strip), that strangely shaped sliver of Namibian territory wedged between Zambia and Botswana, was a wildlife wasteland. On the tails of a short-lived, secessionist rebellion, guns flooded the region and poaching either wiped out the...
Nkasa Rupara: Echoes of Linyanti
There’s something about Nkasa Rupara (Mamili NP) that sets it apart from the other Zambezi Region parks. For a start, it lies well south of the region’s major population centres, removing it nicely from the clamour further north. It’s also just across the water from the wildlife-prolific...
The best of the Kalahari
Where Botswana meets South Africa and becomes one, Kgalagadi is one of the Kalahari’s most beautiful corners, with wildlife to match. The park’s signature species is the black-maned Kalahari male lion – the park is home to around 450 lions – but there’s a decent chance you’ll also see...
Easy access from Gaborone
Diminutive Mokolodi can’t compete with Botswana’s more famous northern parks, but if you find yourself in Gaborone it makes for a highly worthwhile day trip. A private reserve, the park offers an interesting mix of accessible activities and offbeat adventure. Cheetah interactions and a visit to...
Elephants and even more elephants!
Elephantophiles take note. If you want to get up close and personal with the lumbering giants of the African veld, then there is no better place on Earth than Chobe National Park. With an estimated 120,000 elephants roaming its bounds – which is the highest concentration of elephants on the...
Oasis in the desert
After the dirt and dust of Botswana’s Kalahari Desert, the Delta is a welcoming green oasis. Stretching over 18,000 square kilometres and encompassing floodplains, lagoons, forest glades and savannah grasslands, this fertile inland wetland is as breathtaking as it is beautiful. Gliding through the...
“Like Chobe was maybe 15 years ago…”
Bwabwata is very much an understated park, overshadowed by the country’s big hitters like Etosha and the Skeleton Coast. Part of the Zambezi Region, it is very different to the rest of Namibia, a vividly lush landscape of rivers and wetlands. Wildlife here had been decimated through hunting and...
Namibia’s watery wonderland
If you think Namibia is all dunes and desert, think again. The Zambezi Region (formerly Caprivi Strip) is dominated by four mighty rivers – the Okavango, the Linyanti, the Chobe and the Zambezi – that give this place its character. Part of the bartering process of the colonial Scramble for...
The Most Beautiful Place in Africa
The Okavango Delta, a huge water world of marshes, shifting channels, shape-changing islands and reed shrouded natural canals is, in my opinion, quite simply the most beautiful corner of Africa. To see it from the air, as you fly into a remote dirt airstrip on a light plane (which is how most people...
The Mysterious Savuti Channel
Linyanti Reserve lies to the west of the well-known Chobe National Park. It shares many of the same pleasures as Chobe: the extraordinary concentrations of elephants, the vast black herds of buffalo and a landscape that, like much of Botswana, see-saws back and forth between dry, burnt and hard and...
A secluded swampland detour in the Zambezi Region (Caprivi Strip)
Nkasa Rupara National Park is found deep in the Zambezi Region, and is characterized by its floodplains, intricate river channels and riverine islands. It’s not the easiest place to get to, but worth the effort if you’ve got time to really get to know this region, and especially if you want to...
The new jewel in Namibia’s conservation crown
Bwabwata is at the heart of the world’s largest conservation area, the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA). Still raw but bursting with potential, this verdant park feels a little like Botswana’s Chobe minus the crowds. Sometimes referred to as “the people’s park”,...
Life in the Heat Haze
Etosha National Park centres on a vast, normally bone-dry, lake bed. Around this stretch miles of burnt grasslands and dry woodlands. It’s not the most promising sounding of safari destinations and most people would assume that the best time to visit, if at all, would be in the wet season when the...
A Pleasant Surprise on the Periphery of Vic Falls
My only visit to this very scenic park adjoining the majestic Victoria Falls was pretty much an accident. I was due to conduct a quick site visit at the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge for a Fodor’s update on the Vic Falls chapter of one of its books, before returning to the town centre. As soon as I...
Big cat country
The Kgalagadi is South Africa’s biggest and most remote park, and one of my personal favourites. At over 3.5 million hectares, this arid and ancient stretch of land – which crosses the border between South Africa and Botswana – is double the size of Kruger. The first thing that I always notice...
The rare jewel in Botswana’s safari crown
The Okavango Delta is Africa’s largest oasis – each year approximately 11 cubic kilometres of water spreads over 15,000 kilometres of papyrus reeds, countless islands and broad floodplains, forming large lagoons and an intricate web of meandering channels that fan outwards from the delta’s...
Salt pans and endless sky
Nxai Pan is one of Botswana’s more remote parks and the game is certainly not as densely populated as the likes of Chobe National Park, though there are still large numbers of elephants and plains game around, and we also saw lion, jackal and bat-eared fox during our short stay here. Nxai Pan is...
Land of the giants
Close to the Zimbabwean, Zambian and Namibian borders and an easy day trip away from the unmissable Victoria Falls, Chobe is Botswana’s flagship park and not without good cause. The wide and life-giving Chobe River draws incredible numbers of hippos, crocodiles, buffalo, waterbuck and a plethora...
The Only Thing Lacking is a Hans Zimmer Soundtrack
If you yearn for David Attenborough’s Africa; a wilderness where wildlife abounds and where you feel you are in the midst of a BBC documentary, then Botswana is probably the place for you. Most of it consists of the Kalahari; a flat semi-desert dominated by golden grasses, mopane woodlands, and...
A viewpoint to three nations
Driving through the scorched terrain of this park, which sits on South Africa's border with Zimbabwe and Botswana, I couldn't help wondering if there was actually any life to be found. Even the trees seemed lifeless and we saw little more than the occasional bug or butterfly as we explored the hilly...
Bush, baobabs and cultural significance
Getting to Mapungubwe is an experience in itself: driving along the Zimbabwe border on the empty Rte 572, you encounter shimmering mirages, troops of baboons and surreal baobab trees. The park is an extraordinary place, covering 28,000 hectares in the sweltering Limpopo River valley, with viewpoints...
Luxury in the Bush
To meet the Big Five and experience the wilderness in luxury, there's nowhere quite like Madikwe. Conveniently located between Sun City and the Botswana border, exclusive lodges scatter the reserve's 750 sq km of bushveld. Safaris here are conducted by rangers with radios; if one spots a predator at...
Baobabs, big cats and salt pans
Between Botswana's famous Kalahari and Okavango Delta, it's well worth stopping at the extraordinary network of salt pans known as the Makgadikgadi Pans. In this surreal area, heat haze shimmers above the cracked white pans, warping the horizon and the knotted shapes of baobab trees. There are...
Historical sites and endemic wildlife
Having explored Ethiopia extensively over the course of more than half-a-dozen trips since I researched the first modern guidebook to the country in 1994, I’d regard it to be one of the most profoundly rewarding travel destinations in Africa, and possibly my personal favourite. Admittedly, it...
An awesome chunk of raw Kalahari
Kgalagadi is one of Africa's most incredible wildlife parks, and one of the world's most pristine wildernesses, covering a chunk of Kalahari roughly the size of the Netherlands. The arid landscape is stunning: red dunes ripple away to the horizon, dotted with thorny acacia trees and, in the wet...
A hard act to follow…
Justifiably Botswana’s premier attraction, the Okavango Delta is a safari experience like no other. In the wet season, the delta stretches out into swampy corridors spreading between small islands and edged by tall reeds and papyrus. A trip along these tranquil waters in a traditional mokoro (a...
Land of the Lechwe
The Bangweulu wetlands are destined to become Zambia’s answer to Botswana’s Okavango Delta in the future, but there are some substantial differences at this early stage. Although Bangweulu is home to some 75,000 endemic black lechwe along with the enigmatic shoebill, it has suffered badly at the...
The Southern Side of Victoria Falls:
Extending westwards from Victoria Falls towards the border with Botswana, this relatively small park functions largely as an annexe to the nearby waterfall, and is difficult to discuss outside that context. Almost all safari itineraries to Zimbabwe incorporate the mile-wide waterfall, which lies on...
Lost city on the Limpopo
Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, this relatively new national park is not primarily a wildlife destination, so it ranks quite poorly judged on those terms. Its centrepiece is Mapungubwe Hill, site of the medieval capital of a wealthy trade empire that supplied locally sourced gold,...