Safari to Kgalagadi South

where sheer emptiness is the primary appeal

The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park straddles the border between Botswana and South Africa and covers an absolutely enormous 37,000 square kilometres.

This is a dry and arid land, the southern part of the great Kalahari Desert. The landscapes are largely fossilised sand dunes covered with light scrub and punctuated by ancient dry river beds.

Like the better known Central Kalahari reserve to the north, when the landscapes here become freshened by occasional rain showers, the rich soil in the dry riverbeds can bring forth a rich crop of nutritious grass, which can cause intense clustering of the otherwise sparse desert wildlife, especially larger herds of springboks.

But for the majority of the year the land is dry and only the real desert specialists can survive here, like oryx, ostriches, jackals, brown hyenas and aardvarks. The area also hosts a small population of large black-mane lions.

The part of the reserve which lies to the south of the Botswana border may only equate to a quarter of the land surface, but it is rather more accessible and has far more visitor facilities. That is not to say that this is an easy place to get to, it’s a long, hard and hot slog up to the park gate and beyond. Those who do make it this far are rewarded with a real sense of wilderness, even desolation, and although wildlife is naturally thin on the ground, it can be most satisfying.

Less well equipped visitors are restricted to the larger parks authority facilities at Nossob Restcamp, Mata Mata Restcamp and Twee Rivieren Restcamp, as well as the privately operated Xaus Lodge.

Self-sufficient travellers with proper safari vehicles can head to much simpler and more remote facilities such as Bitterpan Camp and Gharagab Camp.

We are very rarely asked to include this area in trips, largely because of the level of expertise and length of time needed to complete the journey north. Most of our guests who are interested in this area prefer to fly up to Maun and combine the Central Kalahari and Makgadikgadi areas with the better watered and more productive safari areas of Okavango Delta and Linyanti Waterfront.

for very self-sufficient travellers only