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Why you’ll love safari in Botswana
The world’s sunniest place
Botswana is literally and metaphorically the sunniest place in Africa. Here in the Kalahari Desert, the sun is taken for granted and rain is a blessing.
Here at ATR, we all love to explore and we all have our favourite safari locations. But when we genuinely need a break from everything, a real vacation, it’s to Botswana we most often turn.
Between us, we have explored the country as youngsters, we have built and worked in camps here, we have shared eternally sunny moments with our kids and we have discovered a deep and meaningful happiness in our older years.
We truly love Botswana and we would love to share it with you.
The purest safari in Africa
Botswana is vast and wild, with over 40% of the land area under full conservation and the fifth lowest human population density in the world.
Even the wilderness is more wild, with the key conservation areas of Botswana having a camp density less than 1% of that in South Africa.
Flying north from Johannesburg, the landscape is populated and farmed all the way up to the border with Botswana, which marks the start of the Kalahari Desert. From there northwards, a vast empty wilderness stretches from horizon to horizon.
This truly is an almost infinite wilderness, where you can immerse yourself in the hypnotic intoxicating majesty of Africa.
Such an easy place to travel
Botswana is such an easy place to explore.
When you land in the little airport at Maun, you can stroll across the quiet street to a lovely local cafe, leave your bags outside, chat with locals (almost all of whom work in safari) and enjoy a laid-back lunch.
After that, you will be guided by a friendly face, back across the street, to jump in a small plane and make a short hop to a remote airstrip, spotting elephants and giraffes along the way, before the safari drive into camp, where more lovely people are waiting to look after you.
The hassle factor here is negligible. The shock comes at the end of your visit, when you have to return to the more complicated world that we normally inhabit.
The miracle of the desert
Incredibly, the wetlands of the Okavango Delta flood with water during May-Oct, bringing life to to the Kalahari Desert throughout the dry season.
This bizarre climatic anomaly is caused by the six month delay that it takes the water to arrive from the distant mountains of Angola.
The floodwaters create enormous and very beautiful wetlands, a dramatic explosion of green in the heart of desert, drawing in huge numbers of animals from the vast arid hinterland, leading to some of the richest and easiest wildlife viewing in Africa.
Superb camps and lodges
Over the decades, our lovely friends in Botswana have managed to take hospitality to extraordinary levels.
The camps in Okavango have become incredibly stylish, comfortable and superbly hosted.
And yet, through considered design and a very deliberate zero footprint approach, they have managed to retain the character of authentic and remote outposts, the perfect blend of earthiness, authenticity and indulgence.
This is hospitality on a level you are unlikely to have encountered elsewhere. It really is another level of existence.
A truly deep experience
Botswana is the perfect place for a leisurely safari. Each day, you can choose whether or not you want to join the morning and afternoon safaris. The greatest luxury is to sneak a lie in or an afternoon nap and simply enjoy the surroundings. It can be very laid back.
On the other hand, if you want to take safari to the next level, you can stay in exactly the same camp, you simply need to commit more time out in the bush. If you take a private vehicle and guide, you can be out as long as you like, right through the day and deep into the night (when most of the hunting action takes place).
We promise that if you put in the hours, you should be rewarded with an experience so extraordinary it will literally reset your life.
We’re all ears!
Insider tips for safari in Botswana
Flood fluctuations
Safari in Botswana is incredibly seasonal, not just month-by-month, but literally camp-by-camp.
There are great things going on year round, but you need to choose your camps with absolute precision.
Uniquely, we rate every camp for every activity and animal in every month of the year, base upon our own expertise, endless conversations with the guides and regular updates from the bush.
We take this very seriously.
Beware the heat
Having just said that safari in Botswana is great year round, we should warn you about the heat during the Oct-Dec transition from dry to green seasons. It can be genuinely hot and humid.
This is not so much of an issue during the day, but at night you either need to be hardy or choose one of the few camps with aircon.
By contrast, the genuinely cold nights of Apr-Aug are cosy and fun, especially when shared with a cuddly ‘bushbaby’ (hot water bottle).
Serious safari
With the ever increasing levels of polish delivered by the camps in Botswana, it’s no surprise that the core safari experience can become diluted.
You don’t have to spend all day and night out in the vehicle, or do serious wildlife approaches on foot of by boat, but we think it’s really important that these options remain available.
Camps that are able to deliver serious safari are generally better operations from top to bottom.
Wet and dry
Wet camps are locations where the Apr-Oct flood is most widespread, causing a pronounced and sometimes exclusive focus on water-based activities by motorboat and mokoro canoe.
These outings are fun and hypnotic, but they can get repetitive and they do not deliver anywhere near the level of wildlife sightings as vehicle safari.
For most trips, we combine dry and mixed camps, only occasionally using a pure wet location in longer combinations of three or more camps.
Avoiding traffic
When we talk about safari in Botswana in such glowing terms, we are referring to the vast private concessions that cover over 90% of the key safari areas, where a handful of guests share hundreds of square kilometres of virgin bush.
The remaining areas (notably Kasane, Chobe, Savute and Moremi) are contained within national parks, where the vehicle traffic can be absolutely horrific. We only use these areas only very rarely and with extreme caution.
Avoiding bankruptcy
Botswana is the most expensive safari location in Africa during the Jun-Oct dry season, so we need to tread with great care.
However, during the Nov-Apr green season prices can more than halve, providing incredible value, especially during the Feb-Apr ‘secret season’, which also happens to coincide with late summer in Cape Town.
If you have the flexibility to travel during less popular months and to book last minute, we should be able to help you take advantage of some great value options.
Paws for thought
Is Botswana the place for you?
Seasonality
Botswana experiences four distinct seasons, affecting the quality and cost of safari.
May to September is the cool dry season, the best time for wildlife, but also with the highest prices.
October is the hot end of the dry season, with epic wildlife, high prices but very high temperatures.
November to February is the warm green season, with great prices, interesting wildlife, but a hot and humid with occasional magnificent downpours.
March to April is a transition season, with fast improving conditions and some great pricing.
Duration
For most people, the length of their core safari in Botswana is limited by budget. This can be a very expensive undertaking.
Ideally, you would spend maybe six to nine nights in the bush, split between three different camps. But most people limit themselves to two or even just one camp.
To extend that core safari into a good length trip, you can combine with lower cost locations like Victoria Falls, Cape Town or the beaches of Mozambique.
Whilst a Botswana only trip can be as short as a week, most combination trips end up between 12 and 28 nights.
Budget
Botswana is the most expensive safari location in Africa, with prices during the Jun-Oct high season in the range USD 1000-5000 per person per night.
However, during the Nov-Mar green season prices can drop as low as USD 500.
Importantly, the quality of the core safari experience does not generally vary with price. The upper end of the price range is for the most polished and luxurious lodges, where the safari experience tends to be easier and more leisurely.
Camps in the middle and lower range are mostly very comfortable, but the guests tend to be more focused on the wildlife.
Family safari
Many of us here at ATR have travelled extensively with our own kids, so we know for a fact that safari in Botswana is an absolute dream for families. This is the kind of trip that guarantees to generate memories that you will share with your kids for the rest of your lives.
The safari here is ideal for families with kids of 12 years and older, strong for kids 8-11 years and viable from 6-7 years old. If your kids are 0-5 years, then it’s probably best to look at other locations.
The only thing we really need to worry about is the price, but we will help you navigate around that. If we can’t find a solution, we can always look at other parts of Africa.
Honeymoon safari
There is a good chance that Botswana is the ideal location in Africa for your honeymoon. It does inherently deliver a magical blend of adventure, romance, comfort and relaxation.
If you want more of a hardcore adventure trip, then maybe we should look at Tanzania or Namibia.
But if you want to simply share magical moments in the bush and have the time of your lives, then Botswana will work its way into your soul, delivering a wonderfully subtle, deep and indelible set of experiences and memories.
All we need to do is build your perfect safari.
Luxury safari
Botswana offers the most luxurious and polished safari in Africa.
At the upper end of the price range, the camps and lodges are truly extraordinary. They manage to strike the perfect balance between delivering extremely high levels of comforts and service, whilst still feeling like proper outposts in the bush.
The connections between camps are done by convenient short hops in light aircraft or small helicopters, whilst the daily routine at the lodges can be as busy or restful as you wish. This is not luxury, this is a higher level of existence.
And we can push it further, with private camps, celebrated guides and other wonderful additions.
Striped and ready
Sample Trips
All our guests travel on tailor-made adventures, but here are some popular trip shapes to get you warmed up
