Botswana runs its safari country on a simple rule: few people, high fees, wild land. The parks and the private concessions around them are unfenced, the camps are small and mostly reached by light aircraft, and the animals move as they always have between the Okavango, the Chobe river and the Kalahari. It is the most expensive safari destination in the region and, for most people who go, the best.
A first trip usually joins two or three of four regions: the Okavango Delta, where the water is; Moremi and the Khwai river on its eastern edge, where the game is densest; Chobe in the north, for the elephants along the river; and the Makgadikgadi and Nxai pans to the south-east, for the salt flats, the meerkats and the zebra migration. This guide takes them in that order, says when each is at its best, and lists the camps we can book in each.
