Information to help you prepare for your holiday or vacation to Botswana courtesy of Bradt Guides.
With a wealth of practical and background information, this travel guide is the essential companion for your holiday. Reading up on the places you visit will help you get a little more out of vacations and help you understand local sensitivities better.
Northern Botswana's pristine wilderness protects some of the earth's most spectacular wildlife and is an ideal place to go on safari: dense concentrations of big-game animals, an amazing wealth of birdlife and wildlife, and huge herds of elephants and buffalo, roaming from the saltpans of the Kalahari Desert to the lush Okavango Delta. Devoid of the marks of modern man, the landscape still bears the imprints of our ancestors, from the subtle art of the Tsodilo Hills to the more brutal remnants of the Stone Age.
A few remote camping spots and some of the world's best safari lodges attract true lovers of nature to travel and experience this extraordinary region. With a wealth of practical and background information, this travel guide is the essential companion for your holiday.
The Bradt guide is ideal for wildlife safaris, concentrating on Botswana's most popular regions. Extensive guidance is offered on choosing lodges and safari camps, and there are detailed sections on environment, wildlife and flora, including the abundant birdlife in the wetland paradise of the Okavango Delta.
Chris McIntyre is managing director of a UK travel company that specialises in southern Africa, and is author of Bradt's acclaimed Namibia and Zambia travel guides. Below he describes his impressions of Botswana.
It's tempting here, by way of introduction, to list the highlights of Botswana's main areas one-by-one, describing each to entice the reader. But to do this would be misleading, as Botswana has just three main attractions for me.
Firstly, it's the wildlife. Whether your travelling for your first safari or your fiftieth, vacations to Botswana won't disappoint. The sheer variation of the country, from the arid Kalahari Desert to lush, well-watered forest glades, ensures tremendous variety. Botswana is serious about its big game. It has spectacular herds of elephants and buffalo, and prolific populations of predators. Experienced safari enthusiasts can bounce across the bush following a pack of wild dogs; Botswana has probably the continent's best population of these highly endangered predators. Yet often it's the country's smaller residents that will keep you entertained, from tiny painted reed frogs and barking geckos, to troops of entertaining meerkats.
Secondly – and the underlying reason why many travel here – is the feeling in Botswana that you're within an endless pristine wilderness, almost devoid of human imprint. For city-dwellers, such space seems to complete the ultimate vacation.In Botswana, animals wander freely across vast reserves which are measured in thousands of square kilometres, not hectares. A holiday exploring these wilder corners is invariably deeply liberating.
Thirdly, and missed by some, is Botswana's rich history. It's often barely hinted at but, veiled and mysterious, it's all the more enticing. It reveals itself in the paintings at Tsodilo, and the magic that seems to surround those hills. You'll catch a glimpse of it as you search for Stone-Age arrowheads on the Makgadikgadi Pans. And standing on an ancient river-bed, or the wave-washed hills around Savuti, it's hard not to think back and wonder what forces shaped this country, long before you, or any Europeans, first set eyes on it.
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