botswana

Botswana is expensive on purpose. The country sells few beds across enormous private concessions rather than many beds in a public park, and you are paying for the empty space around you. A good camp with an experienced guide and the flights between camps runs $1,200 to $2,000 each a day.

The smarter camps and the private houses sit at $2,500 to $3,500. A mobile safari taken on exclusive use, or helicopter access to the harder corners in the July to October months, can pass $5,000. The rate normally carries your room, all meals, the activities, park fees and the light aircraft between camps.

Ten to fourteen days for a proper circuit: a water camp in the Delta, a concession chosen for its predators, and then either the desert or the Chobe river. Seven nights does two of those three well.

A mobile safari needs seven nights of its own to be worth the setting up and taking down. Victoria Falls, if you want it, is two more nights on the end rather than a day trip.

Light aircraft, in hops of twenty to forty minutes, on scheduled services that collect from several airstrips on the way. Twenty kilograms a person including hand luggage, in soft bags, because the lockers are the shape they are.

A private charter is worth pricing for a party travelling together or a tight connection. Driving yourself suits Chobe and cannot reach a Delta camp at all. A helicopter gets you to ground the aircraft cannot use, and it is the only way into a few places we like, so we quote it where it genuinely changes the trip.

Because of how few vehicles you share a sighting with. Camps here hold traversing rights over private concessions the size of English counties, so where a busier country might put six vehicles at a leopard, you are usually alone with it.

The country also does three quite different things well: water, in the Delta channels; desert, in the Kalahari; and the old mobile safari, moved by hand and set up ahead of you. It costs more than most of Africa. If what you want is space and quiet, that is exactly what the money buys.

A year or more ahead for July to October, and longer still for the camps with fewer than ten rooms, which is most of the ones worth having.

The green months are easier and often better value. A mobile safari needs the longest notice of all, because there is only one of it. If your dates fall in July, August or over Christmas, book as early as you can bear.

Victoria Falls, ninety minutes by light aircraft from Kasane, which is why so many trips finish there. Zimbabwe's Hwange and Mana Pools sit alongside on the other side of the same border and cost noticeably less for the same quality of guiding.

Zambia pairs well through Livingstone for walking. Namibia shares the Kalahari and turns the trip into a desert journey. Cape Town and the winelands make a comfortable ending, connected through Johannesburg.