10 Botswana Experiences to Build Your Next Custom Itinerary Around

Botswana covers roughly 581,730 square kilometres, close to the size of France, yet holds a population of just 2.7 million, making it one of the most sparsely populated countries on Earth. The Kalahari Desert spreads across nearly 70% of that land, though water still defines much of what travellers come to see.  

Diamond mining has anchored the country’s economy since the 1970s, and that wealth funds a deliberate high-value, low-volume tourism policy entailing fewer visitors, higher standards, and vast tracts of wilderness left largely undisturbed.  

The result is a country where you can pole through papyrus channels in the Okavango Delta one day, watch elephants gather along the Chobe River the next, and track desert-adapted lions across the Kalahari by the end of the week.  

Here are 10 experiences that trace Botswana’s range, from water to sand and everything that moves between them. 

Glide Into the Okavango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage Wetland 

The Okavango River rises in the highlands of central Angola and travels roughly 1,600 kilometres before spreading across the Kalahari sands, never reaching the sea. The resulting delta shrinks to around 6,000 square kilometres in the dry season and swells to 15,000 square kilometres once floodwaters arrive between March and August. UNESCO inscribed the Okavango Delta as its 1,000th World Heritage Site in 2014, protecting a wetland made up of permanent swamps, seasonal floodplains, and more than 150,000 islands. Moremi Game Reserve, covering roughly 5,000 square kilometres within the delta, shelters lion, leopard, and endangered African wild dog alongside more than 500 recorded bird species. Reed-lined channels wind between papyrus stands, creating a landscape that looks nothing like the dry Kalahari surrounding it. 

Pole Through the Delta by Traditional Mokoro 

Bayei communities have poled dugout canoes through these waterways since migrating to the region roughly 2,000 years ago. Traditional mekoro were carved from single trunks of sausage tree or African ebony, shaped into a narrow hull around 6 metres long. A poler stands at the stern, pushing a long wooden pole called a ngashi against the shallow riverbed to move the canoe forward, the same technique used for punting. Most mekoro today are moulded from fibreglass instead, a shift that has saved countless mature trees from being felled. Each canoe carries one or two passengers low enough to the water to watch malachite kingfishers dart past and lechwe antelope wade through the reeds at eye level. The ride makes no sound beyond the pole tapping the riverbed. 

Learn to Track and Survive with Kalahari Bushmen 

San communities have lived in the Kalahari for longer than almost any other population on Earth, with genetic studies tracing their lineage back tens of thousands of years. Around 100,000 San people remain across southern Africa today, speaking languages built around distinctive click consonants. Join San guides on a walking safari to learn how they read animal tracks in the sand, distinguishing species, age, and how recently an animal passed through. Guides demonstrate how to start a fire by rubbing sticks together, set snares, and locate edible roots and water-storing plants in terrain that looks barren to an untrained eye. Bow-making remains a valued skill, still taught to young hunters. It’s a rare chance to learn survival methods refined over millennia, from people who still practise them. 

Track Desert-Adapted Wildlife Across Private Kalahari Concessions 

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve covers 52,800 square kilometres, making it the second-largest game reserve on Earth and larger than the Netherlands. Established in 1961, it originally served as a sanctuary protecting San land rights within the desert. Private concessions along its northern boundary offer access away from public park traffic, with far fewer vehicles per sighting. Black-maned Kalahari lions, distinguished by their size and dark manes, roam alongside brown hyena, cheetah, and African wild dog. Gemsbok and springbok, both built to withstand extreme heat through internal temperature regulation, gather in Deception Valley’s ancient fossil riverbed after summer rains. Guides here track animals across open grassland and salt pan, terrain that looks empty until the wildlife reveals itself. 

Cruise the Chobe River Among Elephant Herds 

Chobe National Park, established in 1967, covers 10,566 square kilometres in northern Botswana. The Chobe River, which forms part of the border with Namibia, draws an estimated 120,000 elephants into the wider ecosystem during the dry season, the largest elephant population found anywhere on the continent. Boat cruises put visitors at water level among herds crossing between islands, hippos surfacing in pods, and Nile crocodiles sunning on the banks. More than 450 bird species have been recorded along the river, including African fish eagles and carmine bee-eaters. Chobe forms part of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, a protected region spanning five countries. Late afternoon cruises catch elephants bathing and drinking as the light softens over the water. 

Drive the Chobe Floodplains by 4×4 

Pair a Chobe River cruise with a 4×4 game drive across the park’s floodplains to see how dramatically the landscape shifts within a single day. The floodplains flood and recede with the seasons, drawing buffalo herds, zebra, and impala onto fresh grazing as water levels change. Guides track lion prides that follow these same herds, along with the giraffe and kudu that browse the surrounding mopane woodland. The Savuti region, further west within the park, adds sand ridges and an unpredictable channel that has flooded and dried multiple times over the past century, still puzzling hydrologists today. Combining water and land safaris in the same park gives a far fuller picture of Chobe’s ecosystem than either activity offers alone. 

Visit the Khwai Community and Learn About Local Life 

Khwai village is on the northern bank of the Khwai River, just outside Moremi Game Reserve’s north gate, home to around 400 people. Most residents are Babukakhwe, also called River Bushmen, a San community with their own language, Bukakhwaedam, alongside some Bayei families. The Khwai Development Trust manages the surrounding concession on behalf of the village, channelling tourism income directly back into the community rather than through outside operators. Visit the village to see how homes are built, how families cook over open fires, and how traditional knowledge of the delta’s plants and animals gets passed to children. It’s a direct look at how a community living beside some of Africa’s richest wildlife has taken control of the tourism built on its land. 

Search for Africa’s Top Predators in the Khwai Region 

Botswana holds an estimated 1,310 African wild dogs across 131 packs, spread over a range exceeding 315,000 square kilometres, one of the largest surviving populations of this endangered predator anywhere. The Khwai concession, covering close to 200,000 hectares between Moremi and Chobe, sits within a corridor these packs use to move between ecosystems. During the dry season, packs den at known sites here and can be found reliably for weeks at a time. Guided 4×4 drives also turn up lion, leopard, and cheetah hunting the open floodplains and mopane glades, alongside rarer sightings of roan and sable antelope emerging from cover to drink. Night drives add serval, honey badger, and porcupine to the list, species rarely seen during daylight hours. 

Cross Three Distinct Landscapes in a Single Journey 

The Kalahari Desert covers roughly 70 percent of Botswana’s land area, yet the country holds three starkly different landscapes within a few hundred kilometres of each other. The Chobe floodplains stay green year-round along the river, drawing the continent’s largest elephant herds to permanent water. The Okavango Delta interrupts the surrounding desert with reed-lined channels and papyrus swamps, fed by rain that fell in Angola months earlier. Beyond both lies the Kalahari itself with its red sand, scattered acacia, and salt pans that stretch to the horizon, home to species built to survive months without drinking. Travelling between the three in a single itinerary shows how much variation a single country can hold, from waterlogged channels to bone-dry pan within a short flight. 

Fly Between Botswana’s Wilderness Regions by Bush Aircraft 

Maun International Airport ranks among the busiest airports in Africa by aircraft movements, second only to Johannesburg’s OR Tambo, driven almost entirely by light aircraft ferrying safari guests between camps. Cessna 206 and Cessna 208 planes, carrying between five and twelve passengers, connect Maun to dozens of grass and gravel airstrips scattered across the Okavango Delta, Chobe, and the Kalahari. Charter flights carry a strict luggage limit of 15 to 20 kilograms per person, packed into soft bags that fit the aircraft’s small hold. Flying between regions cuts what would be a full day of overland driving down to under an hour, with aerial views over the delta’s channels and islands along the way. It’s often as memorable as the safari itself, watching the landscape’s patterns unfold from above. 

Plan Your Botswana Trip with Forward Travel 

Botswana rewards travellers who want space, silence, and wildlife on a scale few other countries can match, and that’s exactly where Forward Travel can help. Our team builds fully custom Botswana itineraries around the experiences above, whether you want a focused week between the Delta and Chobe or a longer route that adds the Kalahari and its Bushmen communities.  

We can also combine Botswana with neighbouring countries, pairing it with Zambia, Zimbabwe, or a wider southern Africa route, so your trip covers more ground in one journey. If you’re drawn to a particular theme, from water-based safaris to desert tracking to cultural encounters with San communities, we’ll curate the itinerary around it. 

Contact the Forward Travel team today to start building your custom Botswana journey.