zimbabwe & botswana: khwai camping to chief’s island

All the crossings fall in the first four days, and none is difficult.

You enter Zimbabwe on arrival at Victoria Falls. Two days later you are driven to Kasane in Botswana, which takes an hour and a half, or two if the border is busy.

At the immigration jetty in Kasane you are stamped out of Botswana, and the lodge's boat calls at the Namibian immigration post on its way up the Chobe, about an hour on the water in all. The same happens in reverse when you leave.

For British passport holders, the UK Foreign Office says:

• Zimbabwe requires a visa, which most visitors get on arrival
• Botswana requires none for up to 90 days
• Namibia has required one since 1 April 2025, obtained online in advance or on arrival

We suggest doing the Namibian one online before you leave home. All three countries ask for six months left on your passport and at least three blank pages, and this route fills several. Other nationalities should check their own rules.

Delta Camp works differently from the rest of the trip.

It has no vehicles and no motorboats: every outing is on foot or in a mokoro, a dugout canoe poled from the stern like a punt, and your party has its own guide, drawn from the local communities, for the whole stay.

He poles you across to Chief's Island, inside Moremi Game Reserve, and leads the walks there, usually at sunrise and again towards sunset. With no engine anywhere the days are quiet ones, and the wildlife is met on foot rather than from a seat.

How the walking is led differs from camp to camp in Botswana, so we go through what to expect with you while we are planning. If you would rather these last two days leaned on the mokoro instead, tell us and we will set them up that way.

Because the rules change at the boundary, and with them what you can do.

The Khwai Community Reserve is community land on the northern edge of Moremi. There your guide may leave the track to stay with a leopard or a pack of wild dogs, take you out after dark with a spotlight and lead a walk, none of which is allowed inside the game reserve.

Moremi is the game reserve itself, and under Botswana's park rules nobody leaves the vehicle, the vehicle does not leave the tracks, and everyone is back in camp around dark.

Three nights in each gives you both: the freedom of Khwai and the protected country of Moremi. The two camps are of the same lightweight kind, so the comfort does not change, only the country and the way the days run.

Simple by design, and you should be comfortable with that for six nights. Our own description is frank that the camp carries the essentials and little more.

For a Botswana mobile camp that usually means:

• A canvas tent you can stand up in
• A camp bed with proper bedding
• A bucket shower that the crew fills with hot water
• A long-drop toilet behind the tent
• Lantern light after dark

A crew travels with the camp, sets it up before you arrive and takes it down after you leave, so you carry and pitch nothing yourself. Evenings are spent round the fire. There is no heating or cooling.

Winter nights can fall close to freezing and the hottest weeks before the rains can top 38 degrees, and canvas does little about either, so pack warm layers for June to August. If six nights sounds like too many, we can replace one of the two mobile stops with a lodge and keep the other.

In the dry months, very likely, though the number on any one afternoon cannot be promised.

When the pans inland dry up, from about June to October, the herds come down to the river to drink and, often, to swim. In Botswana you can see hundreds of elephants at one time along the riverfront then.

A small boat lets you sit quietly beside animals that are drinking or swimming, and brings you closer to hippo, crocodile and water birds than a vehicle can.

Once the rains begin, usually in November, the herds spread back into the woodland and the river is much quieter for elephants, though it is a rich time for birds. The lodge stands on the Namibian bank, looking across at the park, so every outing here is by boat.

The answer is June to September, when our own pages recommend the falls, the Chobe, the Delta and Botswana as a whole.

The Chobe's elephants are on the river, the falls have cleared enough to be seen properly, the Okavango's flood is at its height, which matters at Delta Camp where every outing is by mokoro or on foot, and the mobile camps stay dry. Nights under canvas are cold from June to August, so pack for them.

May and October sit either side.

May is cooler and quieter, already recommended on the Chobe while the Delta is still filling.

October has the most dramatic game and the most punishing heat, often above 40 degrees, which is hard to escape in a tent.

From December to March nearly all of this route carries our challenging rating: hot, stormy and green, with game scattered, mud on the tracks and camping at its least comfortable. What those months do offer is birdlife, young animals, storm light for photographers and lower rates.