Shinde Footsteps

The flight from Maun lands at Shinde airstrip, which the camp shares with its larger sister camp a few kilometres away, and the scheduled service is a seat-in-plane flight in a Cessna Caravan or similar bush aircraft that may land at up to three other airstrips on the way, with your departure time confirmed the evening before. We can arrange a private charter instead, typically a Cessna Caravan or a Pilatus PC-12, which fixes the time and cuts the stops, and from Kasane the flight takes about an hour and a half. The drive in from the airstrip is longest, and most likely to end with the short mokoro crossing, in the high-water months from May to July.

Twenty kilograms a person including hand luggage, in a soft bag with no wheels or frame, is the limit on the light aircraft, and larger cases can be stored free of charge in Maun for the length of the safari. You are met at Maun airport and walked to the aircraft, and the departure tax on flights leaving Maun and Kasane is built into our quote.

Yes. The concession lies in the northern half of Botswana, which TravelHealthPro, the UK's official travel health service, classes as high risk for malaria from October to May, listing antimalarial tablets among its recommendations for those months, and as low risk from June to September, when it advises awareness and bite avoidance. The CDC names the Okavango and Ngamiland districts among the parts of the country for which it recommends prescription medicine to prevent malaria, and the camp's own guidance says the same.

We are travel planners rather than medical people, so the decision sits with you and your doctor or a travel clinic, and it is worth checking close to departure because the advice moves. Walking country works in your favour on this one: long trousers and long sleeves are what you wear on foot anyway, and the same clothes, with repellent on any skin left showing, see you through the fire and the lagoon-side dinners after dark.

Yes, from six under the camp's current terms, and the way to think about it is that the camp suits a family that takes it whole. With six beds in four tents a family of four or five fills it, the family tent's two bedrooms keep children within earshot, the kitchen runs a children's menu, and a child sharing with parents is charged at a child rate rather than an adult one. The walks with the armed guides carry a higher minimum age of their own, and the figures published for it have varied, so we confirm it in writing for your children's exact ages before anything is booked; younger children stay on the drives and the water while the adults walk.

The camp is unfenced, with hippo in the lagoon below the lounge and elephant in the palms behind the tents, and every guest is walked to their tent after dark, so children need a parent's eye on them at all times. Tell us the ages when you enquire and we will say plainly whether it fits, and whether your party needs a private vehicle.

There is wifi in the tents, which the camp itself describes as limited, so count on it for messages and email rather than video calls, and do not count on a mobile signal at all this far into the Delta. If someone in your party needs to be reachable at set times, tell us before you book and we will check the current arrangements with the camp rather than guess; the tents have charging points for phones and cameras, and the editing suite in the main area has more.

Walking country changes with the season more than driving country does. The dry winter from May to September is the walkers' time: mornings that can start close to six degrees in June, July and August, clear skies, and grass short enough to see over. September and October are hot and dry, up to forty in the afternoon, so the walks go out early and the afternoons belong to the water. The rains from November to March, heaviest in January and February, arrive as short afternoon storms; the floodplain greens, the grass stands high and the walks shorten to suit it. The mokoro runs when the flood is up, typically June to October and at its best in July and August, while the motorboats on the deeper channels run all year.

For the walking: neutral colours, long trousers and long sleeves in a light fabric, closed shoes with grip that are already worn in, a hat, strong sun cream and binoculars; for the winter mornings, a warm, windproof jacket, gloves and a scarf; for November to April, a light rain jacket. Everything goes in one soft bag of twenty kilograms, hand luggage included, and the camp launders daily, so you need far less than you think.

Yes, on request rather than by default: the camp normally sells its six beds to whoever books them, so two couples can find themselves sharing the fire, and a family or group that wants the whole place asks for exclusive use when booking, which we arrange and which also waives the private-vehicle charge, since the vehicles are yours anyway. If walking is the point of the trip we can add a dedicated specialist walking guide who travels with your party for the whole safari, six guests to a guide at most, with the guide's own flights and accommodation part of that cost.

Three nights is the right minimum, four to add a long walk, a night drive and a day on the water. The rate is fully inclusive: the tent, all meals and snacks, house wines, local beers and spirits and soft drinks, the walks, drives and water activities with the camp's guides, daily laundry, park fees and taxes, and emergency evacuation cover to the nearest medical facility. Outside it sit the flights, imported wines and champagne, the specialist guide, a single supplement if you travel alone in the shoulder and high seasons, the helicopter flights, and a small nightly donation to the owners' community fund, matched by the owners; five nights or more across this camp and its sister camps brings a long-stay discount when the flights between them are booked together, which is how we book them.