Explore Botswana’s Okavango Delta, Linyanti, and Makgadikgadi Pans before ending at Victoria Falls on this nine-day tailor-made journey through southern Africa’s most extraordinary wilderness areas.
9 days
|From $15,000 pp
Explore Botswana’s Okavango Delta, Linyanti, and Makgadikgadi Pans before ending at Victoria Falls on this nine-day tailor-made journey through southern Africa’s most extraordinary wilderness areas.
This itinerary combines two of southern Africa’s most significant natural landmarks across nine days. The Okavango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the world’s largest inland water systems, sits at the center of the journey.
Moving through private concessions in the Linyanti, a permanent water island lodge in the Delta, and a night on the Makgadikgadi Pans, the itinerary covers three distinct ecosystems before connecting to Victoria Falls, where the Zambezi River drops 108 meters into the Batoka Gorge along the Zimbabwean and Zambian border.
The two destinations are connected by a short flight and represent entirely different experiences of the same region. Botswana delivers its wildlife experiences through stillness and private access, with low visitor numbers and vast wilderness concessions that keep each game drive and water activity entirely your own. Victoria Falls is the opposite, a natural landmark where the spray from the Zambezi is visible from 50 kilometers away and the sound of the falls carries further still.
Do Not Disturb designs the full nine days around how you want your time to feel, from the first light aircraft transfer into the Delta to departure from Victoria Falls Airport.
Your journey into Botswana begins in Maun, a town in the northwest of the country that serves as the logistics hub for the Okavango Delta and all of northern Botswana. Most international flights connect through Johannesburg or Nairobi, with onward domestic services to Maun operating throughout the day.
The town sits on the banks of the Thamalakane River and has a bush strip from which all light aircraft transfers into the Delta and surrounding wilderness areas depart.
A representative meets you on arrival and takes care of everything from here. Depending on your arrival time, same-day connections into the Delta are possible. If your international flight lands late, an overnight in Maun sets you up for an early departure the following morning.
Your light aircraft lifts out of Maun and carries you north to the Linyanti Concession, a private wilderness area bordering Chobe National Park that very few itineraries reach.
Below you, the landscape shifts from Kalahari scrub to the riverine woodland and wetlands of the Linyanti, where the river and its floodplains concentrate wildlife in a way that makes every game drive feel different to the last.
The concession covers over 125,000 acres and is shared by a small number of camps, keeping vehicle traffic low and time on game entirely your own. The dry season pulls elephant here in numbers that rival anywhere in Africa, alongside lion, leopard, and wild dog.
Your mornings and evenings are spent on game drives in open vehicles with a guide and tracker. Walking safaris take you along the riverbank at a pace that opens up details a vehicle cannot reach. Boat and mokoro excursions move you out onto the Linyanti wetlands depending on water levels. After dark, night drives bring a different set of animals into the light.
A light aircraft transfer moves you south into the Okavango Delta, one of the world’s last remaining intact wetland wilderness areas and the centerpiece of the itinerary.
The Delta covers around 15,000 square kilometers at peak flood and supports elephant, hippo, crocodile, lion, leopard, wild dog, and around 550 species of bird within a landscape of papyrus-lined channels, open lagoons, and tree-covered islands.
Your base for three nights is a lodge within a permanent water concession, chosen by our specialists for its position and access to the Delta year-round.
Each morning a local poler takes you out by mokoro at dawn, moving through the channels at water level and pausing when wildlife warrants it. Afternoons shift between motorboat excursions on the open lagoons, game drives, and walking safaris. An overnight fly-camp on a remote island, sleeping under canvas away from the main lodge, can be arranged on request.
A light aircraft transfer moves you east to the Makgadikgadi Pans for one night, a landscape that sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Delta.
The Pans cover around 12,000 square kilometers of salt flats, the remnants of an ancient lake that once covered much of central Botswana. In the dry season the surface is white, flat, and open in every direction, one of the few places on Earth where the curvature of the planet is visible to the naked eye.
That evening a guided walk onto the Pans at sunset puts you in a landscape without a direct equivalent elsewhere in Africa. The following morning, habituated meerkat groups allow close observation from ground level. A lodge on the western edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park, overlooking the Boteti River, provides your base.
A light aircraft transfer to Kasane connects to a road transfer across the Zimbabwean border, a journey of approximately 80km. Your final two nights are spent at a lodge within walking distance of the falls.
The Zambezi drops 108 meters across a width of 1,708 meters into the Batoka Gorge, producing a spray cloud visible from 50km away. The local name, Mosi-oa-Tunya, translates as the smoke that thunders. The gorge path runs through the rainforest along the cliff edge and is the most direct way to experience the falls at water level, where the spray saturates everything year-round.
Your time here can be shaped around what you want from it. A sunset boat safari on the Zambezi above the falls puts you on the river as elephant come down to drink on the banks. A helicopter flight over the gorge system gives a perspective of the falls and the canyon below that no ground-level path can provide. Game drives into Zambezi National Park are also available for those who want more time with wildlife before the journey ends.
Victoria Falls Airport sits approximately 20km from the town center and connects to Johannesburg for onward international flights, bringing the nine-day itinerary to a close.
Flight time to Johannesburg is around one hour, from where connections operate to most international destinations including direct services to the US, UK, and Europe. The journey can be extended with additional nights in Victoria Falls, a Chobe day trip from the Zimbabwean side, or a connection onward to Cape Town or Nairobi.
A mokoro journey through the Okavango Delta moves at a pace that most wildlife experiences do not. Guided by a local poler through papyrus-lined channels at dawn, the experience opens up a side of the Delta that a vehicle safari cannot reach, measured in silence, proximity, and time on the water.
Tell us how you want to feel, we’ll take it from there.
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