Richard Boreham Photography

Here is an introduction to the northern area of Botswana and particularly the Okavango Delta and Chobe River areas that we travelled through during our journey. Hopefully, it will join a 'few of the dots' as to the places mentioned in the main area of the journey story which is, completely according to my own bias, very heavily focussed on the animals that we watched and photographed.

It, in no way, does full justice to the history and culture of the people of Botswana or to story of the country which is quite remarkable in itself.  In 2016, Botswana is celebrating it's 50th anniversary of being an independent country. What is special is that for those 50 years Botswana has been a well governed and peaceful democracy.

The map below shows our trip across northern Botswana and then into Zimbabwe and Victoria Falls.  

Map courtesy Wilderness Travel.  

Pretty much everyone reaches Botswana from South Africa. We flew into Johannesburg after an 11 hour overnight flight from the UK, our home. To give ourselves a buffer we had decided to spend a day and night in Jo'burg (actually a town called Irene near Jo'burg) before heading up to Maun.

Maun is a small town at the bottom end of the delta which is the centre of the safari industry in Botswana. 'Industry' makes it sound rather unpleasant, it's not at all but in August it's pretty dry and the change in scenery from the UK (even with a day's acclimatisation in South Africa) is marked. We spent a night at a lodge about 30 minutes drive outside the town before heading up into the reserves itself.

The Moremi game reserve is a national reserve several hours drive north of Maun. It's a mixture of woodland (Mophane trees predominate), open grasslands and small channels and pools of wetland. Of course, this is the case in August when its dry. Earlier in the winter, it's much wetter and this very flatland can be inundated by the delta's floodwaters and the roads can be impassable at times. The surprising thing is how water seeps up from below; it can be bone dry dusty grassland to wet ground in a single step and the landscape changes are delineated as markedly too.  

Photo >> Southern skies, the Milkyway, in camp at night.

To get back to Moremi, we flew by light airplane from bush strip to bush strip.  From the air, you can really see the wet & dry character of the delta. Low islands, hundreds of animal trails and the waterholes and channels.  

Khwai river is a relatively small river that takes the waters well out into the drier savannah and provides an oasis for the wildlife.  This river is the northern boarder of the Moremi reserve.  It's similar in nature to the southern side though the grasslands are more extensive and there are some large pools, the reserve of hippos.  We spent a further two days here getting out first sighting of lion here.  

The Chobe River lies at the northern edge of Botswana.  The river marks the boarder with Namibia and is major tributary of the Zambezi.  This was the final area we visited.  

Again we drove from Savuti to Chobe River; the trip slowly revealed changes in the scenery.  The soil, which had resolutely been the fine dusty grey of the clay soils of the delta changed to a coarser dark red sand in some areas.  The trees changed from the water logged tolerant Mophane tree to more African Teak.  

Sunrise over the floodplain and Botswana river edge of the Chobe River >>