Explore Botswana’s Selinda Concession, Moremi Game Reserve, and Makgadikgadi Pans on this eleven-day tailor-made safari, moving from wildlife-rich waterways to one of Africa’s most extraordinary desert landscapes.
11 days
|From £15,180 pp
Explore Botswana’s Selinda Concession, Moremi Game Reserve, and Makgadikgadi Pans on this eleven-day tailor-made safari, moving from wildlife-rich waterways to one of Africa’s most extraordinary desert landscapes.
Botswana is landlocked, yet life here is shaped entirely by water. The Selinda Spillway connects the Okavango Delta to the Linyanti River system in the north, running through 130,000 hectares of wilderness that serves as a corridor for one of Africa’s most significant wildlife migrations.
The Moremi Game Reserve covers around 40 percent of the Okavango Delta and was proclaimed in 1963 by the BaTawana people on their own ancestral lands, making it the first reserve in Africa created by an indigenous community. It holds all of the Big Five and some of the highest animal densities in southern Africa.
Further east, the Makgadikgadi Pans sit in complete contrast, a vast salt basin where the ancient lake that once covered much of Botswana has retreated into silence, leaving 12,000 square kilometers of open white flats that stretch to every horizon.
This itinerary moves through three of Botswana’s most distinct wilderness areas across 11 days, beginning in Johannesburg and tracking north and west into some of the most remote and wildlife-rich terrain on the continent. Each area demands a different pace and a different method of travel. Together they form one of the most complete safari journeys in Africa.
Your journey begins in Johannesburg, where most international flights from the US, UK, and Europe arrive before connecting onward to Maun. Domestic connections to Maun operate throughout the day. Depending on your arrival time, an overnight in Johannesburg allows for a comfortable start before the first light aircraft transfer north into Botswana.
Johannesburg is also a destination in its own right. The Apartheid Museum, the Neighbourgoods Market in Braamfontein, and the regenerated Maboneng precinct offer a concentrated introduction to one of Africa’s most layered and contested cities. A representative meets you on arrival and takes care of all logistics from here.
A domestic flight from Johannesburg connects to Maun, from where a light aircraft carries you north into the Selinda Concession. Below you on the flight in, the landscape opens into the broad floodplains and palm-lined channels of the Selinda Spillway, the ancient waterway that links the Okavango Delta to the Linyanti River system and has served as a migration corridor for wildlife for centuries.
The concession covers 130,000 hectares of private wilderness and is shared by a small number of camps, keeping visitor numbers low and game drive routes free of traffic. The concession is one of the best areas in Botswana for wild dog, with packs that range across the open floodplains in a way that the terrain allows you to follow on game drives. Lion are resident year-round, elephant move through in numbers that concentrate along the Spillway in the dry season, and roan, sable, and eland add species to the list that few other Botswana concessions can offer.
Morning and evening game drives in open vehicles with a guide and tracker set the rhythm of each day. Walking safaris run through the reserve’s varied habitats, from the open floodplains to the mopane and leadwood woodlands to the west. Boat safaris and canoeing on the Selinda Spillway are available when water levels permit, offering a water-level perspective on the wildlife that moves along its banks. Night drives reveal a different set of animals after dark.
A light aircraft transfer moves you southwest into the Moremi Game Reserve, the oldest protected area of the Okavango Delta. Proclaimed in 1963 by the BaTawana people, who set aside their own ancestral hunting grounds to protect wildlife that uncontrolled hunting was threatening, it was the first reserve on the continent created by an indigenous community on their own land.
The reserve covers around 5,000 square kilometers of papyrus-lined channels, floodplains, mopane woodland, and palm-fringed lagoons, all shifting with the annual flood pulse. Chief’s Island, at the heart of the reserve, holds all of the Big Five, including black and white rhinos reintroduced in the early 2000s, resident wild dog packs, and over 500 bird species.
Your days move between land and water. Morning game drives cover the reserve in open vehicles, mokoro excursions move through the channels at water level with a local poler, motorboat safaris reach the open lagoons, and walking safaris take you through the landscape on foot.
A transfer moves you east to the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park, and the landscape that greets you on descent is unlike anything in the preceding days. The Pans are the remnants of an ancient lake that once covered much of central Botswana, now 12,000 square kilometers of salt flats where the surface is white, flat, and open in every direction.
There are no trees, no hills, and no landmarks visible from the centre. This is one of the few places on Earth where the curvature of the planet is visible to the naked eye, and the silence that comes with that scale settles differently to anywhere else you will have been.
Game drives along the Boteti River target elephant and lion that follow the water’s retreat during the dry season. Habituated meerkat groups allow close observation from ground level in the early morning, with individuals treating boots and shoulders as elevated lookout posts while they scan the horizon for predators. A guided walk onto the Pans at sunset places you in a landscape without a direct equivalent anywhere on the continent.
When the seasonal floods arrive between December and March, thousands of zebra migrate across the surrounding grasslands in Africa’s second-largest overland migration, drawing the predators that follow them.
An overnight fly-camp on the Pans themselves, sleeping under canvas on the salt flats with no camp infrastructure between you and the open sky, can be arranged on request.
A light aircraft transfer connects to Maun, from where flights link to Johannesburg for onward international connections. Flight time from Maun to Johannesburg is around two hours, with connections to the US, UK, and Europe operating the same day.
The itinerary can be extended with additional nights in the Makgadikgadi, a connection to Victoria Falls, or a night in Johannesburg before departure.
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.
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