Botswana in 10 Days

Ten days in Botswana is enough to link the north’s three big landscapes, the Chobe River, the Makgadikgadi salt pans and the Okavango Delta, in one overland line from east to west. It suits travelers happy to ride regional buses between bases and then hand over to guides once they reach the wildlife. The pace is relaxed: three bases of three nights each and only two bus days, both around five hours or less. You will use long-distance buses and combis on the A33 and A3 highways, changing at Nata, plus lodge and operator 4x4s and a mokoro inside the parks.

Days 1-4: Kasane and Chobe National Park

Start in Kasane, reachable by air from Johannesburg or by road from Victoria Falls in about 90 minutes including the Kazungula border. The town is a strip of lodges, banks and supermarkets along the river, and elephants walk through it after dark, so take a taxi at night. The riverfront section of Chobe National Park begins at the edge of town, which makes it the easiest big park in the country to … read more 👉

Ten days in Botswana is enough to link the north’s three big landscapes, the Chobe River, the Makgadikgadi salt pans and the Okavango Delta, in one overland line from east to west. It suits travelers happy to ride regional buses between bases and then hand over to guides once they reach the wildlife. The pace is relaxed: three bases of three nights each and only two bus days, both around five hours or less. You will use long-distance buses and combis on the A33 and A3 highways, changing at Nata, plus lodge and operator 4x4s and a mokoro inside the parks.

Days 1-4: Kasane and Chobe National Park

Start in Kasane, reachable by air from Johannesburg or by road from Victoria Falls in about 90 minutes including the Kazungula border. The town is a strip of lodges, banks and supermarkets along the river, and elephants walk through it after dark, so take a taxi at night. The riverfront section of Chobe National Park begins at the edge of town, which makes it the easiest big park in the country to see on a budget: shared morning game drives leave from most lodges and campsites. Give one afternoon to a Chobe River Sunset Boat Cruise, where you sit at water level as herds cross toward Sedudu Island and hippos surface beside the boat. Keep the third morning for the Chobe Riverfront at your own speed; a riverside lodge deck at the edge of town is enough for fish eagles, kingfishers and grazing herds on the Namibian floodplain across the water.

Days 4-7: Gweta and the Makgadikgadi

A bus south to Nata takes about four hours, and a connecting bus or combi covers the last 100 kilometers west to Gweta in roughly another hour. Gweta is a small village of thatched houses and huge baobabs on the edge of the pans, and its lodges run the excursions you need. Day 5 belongs to Makgadikgadi Pans National Park and the salt flats around it: habituated meerkats that climb guides to use them as lookout posts, then, in the dry season from roughly May to October, a night sleeping out on the bare crust of Ntwetwe Pan with nothing on any horizon. Day 6 is a 4x4 trip to Nxai Pan National Park, where Baines’ Baobabs stand at the rim of a white pan and, in the rains from about December to March, zebra and springbok arrive with their young.

Days 7-10: Maun and the Okavango Delta

The bus west to Maun runs about three hours along the A3, which leaves the afternoon to confirm your mokoro trip and buy supplies. Next morning, a transfer takes you to the poling station and two nights in the Okavango Delta on an Okavango Delta Mokoro Excursion: gliding along clear, shallow channels, swimming only where your poler says it is safe, and walking the islands at dawn and dusk. Two nights means a full middle day with no transfers at all, which is when the Delta’s quiet sinks in. You return to Maun on day 10 for the flight home.

On the bus day between Kasane and Gweta, break the ride for a few hours at Nata Bird Sanctuary, a community-run reserve on the northern edge of Sua Pan where flamingos and pelicans gather after good rains.