Botswana, Four Camps by Air

Over 12 nights, four camps in three of Botswana's great wildlife areas, from the Kalahari salt pans to the Savute Channel and the heart of the Okavango Delta, with the flights between them part of the safari. A morning among habituated meerkats and a night slept out on the open pans, San paintings in the hills above Savute, an elephant sanctuary near the Delta, and a night in a sculpted treehouse above the floodplains.

Length: 12 nights
Pace: Four stays
Style: Safari, helicopter, private concessions
Route: The Makgadikgadi Pans to Savute to The Okavango Delta to Moremi Game Reserve

The Makgadikgadi PansThree nights
SavuteThree nights
The Okavango DeltaThree nights
Moremi Game ReserveThree nights

A lioness standing on pale sand, looking towards the camera.

Days 1 to 4 · three nights

The Makgadikgadi Pans

A flight from Maun out over the Kalahari to the salt pans. Game drives and night drives, a morning among the camp's habituated meerkats, guided quad biking across the pans and walks with the Zu/'hoasi Bushmen, four generations of whom are hosted at the camp, to a Bushman settlement and to learn the skills they use to survive and to heal in the desert, and a night sleeping out on the pans. The mess tent holds a natural history museum and library; from November to March the zebra and wildebeest migration comes onto the grasslands, and in March and April flamingos breed on the pans.

Where you stay

Jack's Camp

Jack's Camp lies on the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans in Botswana's Kalahari, with nine tents furnished with Persian and North African rugs, paraffin lamps and mahogany campaign furniture, each with a private plunge pool on its deck. Guests dine together at a 36-seat table that served as an officers' mess table in the 1820s.

Elephants and antelope on a sandy riverbank beside a wide, still river.

Days 4 to 7 · three nights

Savute

A flight north from the pans to the Savute Channel in Chobe National Park. Game drives at least twice a day, long hours in the hide over the watering hole as elephants come to drink, and the paintings the San left in the rocks of the nearby hills more than 2,000 years ago. Clear evenings for stargazing.

Where you stay

Savute Elephant Lodge, A Belmond Safari

Savute Elephant Lodge stands on the Savute Channel in Chobe National Park, with a permanent watering hole in front of the lodge and a lookout hide over it. Its 12 tented rooms are raised on platforms, each with a private deck over the channel, and San Bushman rock paintings lie in the hills nearby.

The bow of a wooden mokoro in a narrow channel lined with reeds and water lilies.

Days 7 to 10 · three nights

The Okavango Delta

A scenic helicopter flight over the Delta to Xaxaba Island. Game drives, nature walks, mokoro trips through the channels, a powerboat and fishing, and, if you wish, a safari on horseback and by helicopter across the floodplains. Further afield, the lodge can arrange a day at Elephant Havens, an elephant sanctuary, or the Tsodilo Hills.

Where you stay

Eagle Island Lodge, A Belmond Safari

Eagle Island Lodge is on Xaxaba Island in the Okavango Delta, among ilala palms, where the Delta's first permanent safari camp stood in the early 1900s. Each of its 12 rooms has a private deck and plunge pool, and drinks are served at the Fish-Eagle Bar.

Two lions climbing a fallen tree trunk in green grassland.

Days 10 to 13 · three nights

Moremi Game Reserve

A short flight deeper into the Delta for the last three nights. Drives, walks and a glass-bottomed mokoro or boat through the waterways, with a sundowner taken with your feet in the water. The lodge shows the work of African artists and makers throughout, and, weather permitting, the Baobab, a treehouse a kilometre away shaped after a Pierneef painting, can be kept for your dinner and a night's sleep-out above the floodplains. Then 30 minutes by light aircraft to Maun for home.

Where you stay

Xigera Safari Lodge

Xigera is set deep in the Moremi Game Reserve in the Okavango Delta, almost hidden under a canopy of indigenous trees, and runs on solar power. Its 12 suites and a two-bedroom family suite are each designed individually, with copper fireplaces and sculptural furniture, and contemporary art fills the lodge.

Arranged on request

The meerkats of Makgadikgadi

Time on the ground among a habituated meerkat colony on the pans, with the guides of Jack's Camp.

Walking with the Zu/'hoasi

At Jack's Camp, four generations of Zu/'hoasi Bushmen lead walks to a Bushman settlement and show the skills they use to find food, survive and heal in the Kalahari.

A night on the pans

A sleep-out on the open salt pans, away from camp, with nothing between you and the Kalahari sky.

Flamingos on the pans

In March and April the flamingos breed on the Makgadikgadi, and the pans turn pink.

The Baobab at Xigera

A sculptural treehouse a kilometre from the lodge, after a baobab painted by J. H. Pierneef, taken for meals and a sleep-out above the floodplains, subject to availability and weather.

Elephant Havens

From Eagle Island, a day at Elephant Havens, an elephant sanctuary, can be arranged at additional cost.

Subject to availability.

Ways to make it yours

Three nights at Wilderness Mombo on Chief's Island in place of the last camp, with its spa and meditation space.
Two nights at Victoria Falls, flying in by way of Kasane.
In the green season, a helicopter from Khwai over the flooded country to a six-tent seasonal camp on Nxai Pan, where tens of thousands of zebra arrive, with day trips to Baines Baobabs.

This is a sample. The hotels, the pace and the order are where we start, not where we finish: every journey is designed around the people taking it.

Made around you

Most travel is bought. This is designed.

Before anything is booked, we talk: who is travelling, how you like to spend a morning, and the hotel preferences below the obvious, from the kind of bath you like to the time you wake and how much daylight you need in a room. You see options where options matter and clean recommendations where they don't.

The same person remains your point of contact from the first reply to the trip after next. No handovers. No team.