Travel to Tuli Block

particularly strong for elephants and leopards

At 3000 square kilometres, the Tuli Block is an extensive conservation area that encompasses the extreme southeast corner of Botswana. It is an area of great scenic diversity, fascinating history and rich wildlife.

It is the largest privately owned conservation area in Southern Africa, with the largest elephant population on private land.

Given the paucity of the land for farming in this area, the landowners realised very early that a better living could potentially be earned from safari, first hunting and latterly converting to photographic.

Because the land is privately owned, it can only be accessed by guests staying at the lodges, which makes for a very private and exclusive feel, where safari activities are unbounded by the restrictions imposed by national park authorities.

The lodges in this area offer an unusually broad range of activities including vehicle safari, walking safari, mountain hiking, horse-back safari, mountain-bike safari and night vehicle safari, as well as palaeontological and historic tours.

Health

The Tuli area is considered to have a very low malarial risk and some people apparently visit during the dry season without taking anti-malarial prophylaxis.

This makes the area popular with families with young children, older guests, pregnant women and people with health issues that prevent them from taking anti-malarial drugs.

It is certainly more wild and interesting than the non-malarial areas of Madikwe and the Eastern Cape, all of which are fenced and stocked.

The area is not usually combined with the other safari locations in Botswana (Okavango Delta, Linyanti Waterfront etc.), which are right over the other side of the country. It more often features in South Africa safaris, often in combination with Kruger.

Seasonality

When it comes to deciding when to visit, the best season is generally considered to be May-Oct, although this is very much dependent upon your choice of accommodation and the activities which interest you.

Getting around

Tuli Block is usually accessed by light aircraft, either from Johannesburg or Kruger, direct into the local airstrips.

It is also possible to self-drive from the Mapungubwe area of South Africa to the remote border crossing at Pontdrift, where you can leave your car and be brought across the Limpopo River into the reserve.

Where to stay

The main problem with Tuli Block is the paucity of accommodation options.

The area is not exactly at the cutting edge of safari in Africa and the lodges here are very old-fashioned. Of course that is not all bad news, some of the best camps in Africa are traditional. But the camps here are kind of caught in a 1980s time warp, with heavy buildings sitting in manicured sprinklered gardens.

We guess the reasons are that the area is mainly occupied by small private operations which are not plumbed in to current safari trends and that they are perhaps more closely related to and familiar with the domestic South African market than the needs of international visitors.

The good news is that some aspects of safari used to be better in the old days. Whilst staying here you should hopefully be required to work a little harder on your safari, be ready for some more rigorous guiding and, especially, should experience some proper tracking, walking safari and night vehicle safari.

Having said that, we have also experienced some pretty mediocre guiding here, particularly with respect to avoiding other vehicles on sightings, something you would think would be easy around here.

a limited range of accommodation options