Botswana Safaris

Botswana boasts an enviable conservation philosophy, which endorses low-volume, high-revenue tourism, with significant measurable benefits for local communities. Much of northern Botswana is divided into vast concessions. These private reserves are granted by lease to safari operators and local communities, with strict environmental standards enforced as part of each lease, creating a pristine safari environment.

This does mean that Botswana isn’t a cheap safari destination, but it does offer a unique wildlife experience in a carefully managed environment. Lodges and bush camps are few and far between, so unlike many popular East African parks, once here, you can have the reserves almost entirely to yourself.

While wildlife is abundant, visitors are few, making personal, peaceful wildlife encounters far more likely. Safaris in Kenya and northern Tanzania can involve numerous vehicles jockeying for a view of the animals – with safari trucks driving nose-to-tail to the Ngorongoro crater’s floor each morning – but in Botswana you may be one of a tiny handful of visitors, which means you see animals behaving completely naturally. If you’ve already been to Kruger, the Serengeti or the Masai Mara, Botswana will bring an entirely new African experience – wilder, vaster and more remote.

If you prefer to get right off the beaten track, there is space to explore in this enormous country, too. Like barely developed southern Tanzania, Botswana has parks that lie well beyond its well-established holiday routes and famous reserves. The Central Kalahari Game Reserve (the largest, most remote reserve in Southern Africa) and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, home of famous black-maned Kalahari lions, are rarely visited. If you want a genuine wilderness experience, with the chance to find yourself miles from any other humans, Botswana can deliver.

Spending time with the Maasai tribe brings a human dimension to safaris in Kenya and Tanzania, and in Botswana there’s also the chance to meet and learn from local people. Walk with a Batswana guide around the Delta, or take a stroll through the Kalahari with San Bushmen for a glimpse into this ancient desert culture.

Camping safaris are available, which involve travelling overland in a combination of safari truck and specialist 4x4 vehicles, camping out each night along the way. These are a more affordable way to explore this high-end destination, but involve a lot of driving – Botswana is almost twice the size of the UK and Ireland combined – on roads and tracks that are not exactly smooth or free from dust! This explains why self-drive holidays to Botswana aren’t hugely popular. The unpaved routes, treacherous sandy tracks, log bridges, long journey times and seemingly endless expanses of nothing mean that Botswana is not ideal for a self-drive trip, unless you’re competent behind the wheel of a 4x4 and prepared to rough it for a couple of weeks. In which case, you can hire 4X4s with satellite phone, camping equipment and a two-man roof-tent. For the less intrepid, Namibia and South Africa are more suitable self-drive destinations.

Many tours take in Botswana and its neighbouring countries to offer a rich and varied overview of southern Africa. An overland adventure might involve travelling by safari vehicle and camping along the way, taking in South Africa and Zimbabwe, as well as Botswana. Cape Town to Victoria Falls is a classic overland route, which typically includes the Namib Desert and Etosha National Park in Namibia and Botswana’s Okavango Delta.

Botswana isn’t the most kid-friendly of safari destinations. Distances are long and temperatures are extreme, rising to the high 30s in October and dropping below zero at night in May and June, during the southern African winter. There are often age limits on game drives and bush walks, too. That said, it is possible to find operators that cater for families.

Photo credits: [Top box: Jeremy T. Hetzel] [Why go : Cathy T] [Camp: Roderick Eime] [Bush walks: Michiel Van Balen] [Aerial view: Martijn.Munneke] [Luxury accommodation: Walter Schärer] [Travelling with children: Justin Hall]