Build the trip from two or three blocks in the north, and let the water set the order. The Okavango Delta is the draw, reached from Maun by light aircraft, with the flood highest from June to August. Chobe, entered at Kasane, is the elephant half, best seen from the river. Savuti and Linyanti hold the predators. Further south, the Makgadikgadi and Nxai pans give salt flats and the zebra migration, and the Central Kalahari gives space. Ten days pairs the delta with Chobe. Two weeks adds the pans.
1 Botswana city guide
Fun fact
The 2022 KAZA aerial survey counted 131,909 elephants in Botswana, the largest national population on earth. They have room: about 38 per cent of the country is park, reserve or wildlife management area. The Okavango Delta was inscribed in June 2014 as the 1000th UNESCO World Heritage site.
Stereotypes, sorted out
The realityThe Kalahari covers most of the country, but it is thornveld and grass, home to lion, oryx and brown hyena. The northwest is wetland: the permanent Okavango, the Chobe river and the Linyanti swamps. You can be poled through a channel in the morning and stand on a salt flat in the afternoon.
The realityThe rain falls in the Angolan highlands and takes months to arrive. The flood reaches the delta in the middle of the Botswana dry season and peaks between June and August, so the best water and the best game viewing land in the same cold, rainless weeks. Know that before you book.
The realityIt is expensive because the country keeps numbers low. Concession camps are small, beds are capped, and much of the north is reached by light aircraft, so a fly-in trip costs several hundred dollars a night per person. A self-drive with a rooftop tent and public campsites costs far less.
The realityBotswana has held elections on schedule since independence in 1966, and in 2024 the party that had governed for 58 years lost one and handed over power. The institutions worked. Diamond revenue went into schools, clinics and roads, and the road from Gaborone to Kasane is tarred the whole way.
How to fit in
- Greet before you ask. "Dumela rra" to a man and "Dumela mma" to a woman, then the question. Skipping straight to the request reads as rude in a way it does not elsewhere.
- Pula is the currency, the word for rain, and the thing a crowd shouts at the end of a speech. In a country this dry, rain is the blessing, and the greeting carries that.
- Botho is the local name for the ethic other countries call ubuntu: a person is a person through other people. It is written into the national vision and it shows up as unhurried politeness.
- The kgotla is the village meeting place and the traditional court, and it is still where local matters get argued out in public. Ask before photographing one.
- Cattle are wealth, status and family history as well as livestock. They also wander onto unfenced roads, so do not drive between towns after dark.
- Take the elephant seriously. Kasane and Maun both have wild elephants inside the town limits, and giving them a wide berth on foot is ordinary local behaviour, not tourist caution.
Famous Batswana faces
Unity Dow
Amantle Montsho
Mpule Kwelagobe
Duma Boko
Isaac Makwala
Ketumile Masire
Festus Mogae
Mokgweetsi Masisi
Letsile Tebogo
Seretse Khama
Bessie Head
Nijel Amos
Lauri Kubuitsile
Vee Mampeezy
Zeus
Donald Molosi
Must-try Botswana food
Seswaa
The national dish. Beef or goat simmered for hours, pounded and salted. Served on pap.
Bogobe
Sorghum or maize porridge, the staple. Order bogobe jwa lerotse, cooked with melon.
Phaletshe
Stiff maize meal, the base that seswaa, stew and morogo are all served on.
Dikgobe
Samp cooked with cowpeas or beans until it holds. Filling, cheap and everywhere at lunch.
Morogo
Wild greens, usually cowpea or pumpkin leaves, cooked down with onion and tomato.
Serobe
Offal and tripe stewed slowly for special occasions. Eat what the household eats.
Phane
Mopane caterpillars, dried, then rehydrated in tomato or peanut sauce. A seasonal staple.
Segwapa
Air-dried salted beef, eaten by the handful on long drives. The Botswana take on biltong.
Game meat
Kudu, oryx and springbok, leaner and stronger than beef, usually grilled at lodges.
Magwinya
Fried dough balls, hot from roadside stands and bus ranks. Breakfast on the move.
Mogodu
Tripe stewed until soft, served with pap at street kitchens and workers’ canteens.
Sekgowa braai
Beef, boerewors and chicken over coals at the weekend, in serious cattle country.
Madila
Soured milk, thick and tangy, poured over sorghum porridge or drunk on its own.
Bojalwa ja Setswana
Cloudy, lightly sour sorghum beer, brewed at home and shared from one container.
