Botswana Safari Holidays

Why Choose Botswana for Your Safari?

Botswana made a deliberate choice decades ago: low-volume, high-value tourism. The result is a safari experience that feels genuinely exclusive. Camps are small — most have ten tents or fewer. Private concessions mean you can go off-road, follow animals on foot, and spend an entire morning with a leopard without another vehicle in sight.

If I were forced to name a favourite safari destination — under extreme duress, protesting loudly that I loved them all equally — it would be Botswana. Nowhere else in Africa feels quite as untouched. It is bigger than France, and half of it is full of free-roaming wildlife. That is not a figure of speech. That is simply Botswana.

 The wildlife density is extraordinary. Botswana is home to the largest elephant population on earth, concentrated around the Chobe River and fanning out across vast wilderness areas where lions, leopards, wild dogs, buffalo, and enormous herds of plains game move freely. The birdlife is exceptional too — with over 550 recorded species, it is a paradise for wildlife photographers and birdwatchers alike.

Botswana is not the cheapest safari destination in Africa — and that is entirely by design. The cost reflects the quality of the experience and, crucially, a direct investment in conservation. When you travel to Botswana, your money is actively protecting some of the most important wilderness on the continent.

Botswana's Key Safari Areas

Botswana has five distinct safari regions, each offering a completely different landscape, wildlife profile, and style of experience. Most itineraries combine two or three areas — I can help you choose the right combination for your interests, travel dates, and budget.

Okavango Delta Safari: Africa's Inland Sea

The Okavango Delta is Botswana's most iconic destination — a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the world's largest inland delta. It is one of the most extraordinary ecosystems on earth: a vast wetland that floods from within, nourished by rains that fell in Angola months earlier and travelled over 1,200 kilometres to arrive just as Botswana's dry season begins.

Most Delta camps are inaccessible by road, so you fly in by light aircraft — tiny five-seater planes that skim low over papyrus channels and lily-covered lagoons before bumping down on a grass airstrip. That flight is part of the magic.

Activities vary by season and water level: mokoro safaris gliding silently through water lily channels, boat safaris as water levels rise, walking safaris on the Delta's islands, and game drives through mopane woodland and open floodplains. The wildlife list is exceptional — elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo, hippo, wild dog, red lechwe, and some of the finest birding anywhere in Africa.

Lucie's recommendation: The Okavango deserves an absolute minimum of three nights — ideally four or five. For longer stays I suggest combining two camps in different parts of the Delta to experience the contrast between deep-water channels and drier woodland areas. Camps range from authentic tented experiences like Delta Camp and Shinde Footsteps through to the ultra-luxury of Jao and Xigera.

The Delta changes dramatically with the seasons — my Botswana year-round safari guide explains exactly what to expect at each time of year.

Chobe National Park: Africa's Elephant Capital

Chobe National Park is home to the largest concentration of elephants in Africa. During the dry season the Chobe River becomes a daily theatre: herds of hundreds of elephants descending to drink and swim, crocodiles lazing on sandbanks, hippos yawning in the shallows. A boat safari here — watching elephants swim across the river at eye level — is one of the most iconic wildlife experiences on the continent.

Chobe works well as a standalone destination or even better as part of a longer Botswana itinerary, and its position at the meeting point of four countries makes it easy to combine with a visit to Victoria Falls — just a short flight or road transfer away.

Lucie's recommendation: Two or three nights in Chobe is ideal — long enough for both a game drive and at least one boat safari. I particularly like pairing Chobe with the Okavango Delta for a classic Botswana combination that showcases the country's extraordinary contrast of landscapes.

The Linyanti and Savuti: Botswana's Best-Kept Secret

Less visited than the Delta, the Linyanti and Savuti corridor is where I send clients who have been to Botswana before and want to go deeper. During the dry season, the Linyanti River and surrounding marshes form a wildlife corridor that draws elephants, buffalo, lion, and hyena in spectacular concentrations. The Savuti Marsh is famous for its large, bold lion prides that will walk past your vehicle at close range.

The small number of camps here get booked out early precisely because discerning safari travellers know about them. If you have time for a longer Botswana trip, I strongly recommend adding at least two nights here.

Lucie's recommendation: The Linyanti is also one of the best places in Africa to see African wild dogs, particularly between June and August when they are denning.

The Makgadikgadi Pans: Botswana's Lunar Landscape

A completely different Botswana. The Makgadikgadi is one of the largest salt pan systems in the world - vast, flat, and profoundly silent. In the dry season it resembles a lunar landscape; in the wet season it transforms into something extraordinary.

This is also the setting for one of Africa's great and least-known wildlife spectacles: the Makgadikgadi zebra migration. Around 25,000 to 30,000 zebras leave the Okavango Delta in November and December, following the rains south to the Makgadikgadi Pans, where vast grasslands come alive with nutrient-rich grasses. It was only confirmed by researchers in 2012, using tracking collars, that zebras were completing this unexpectedly long return journey — which makes it feel all the more remarkable. The herds are followed by lion and cheetah, the pans turn flamingo-pink with shallow water, and the whole landscape is transformed.

The best time to see the migration is December to February - which also happens to be low season, meaning lower lodge prices and far fewer visitors.

This is the destination for travellers who want something genuinely unexpected - quad biking across the pans, sleeping under a sky undimmed by any artificial light, walking with the San Bushmen and visiting habituated meerkats.