Okavango 2025

1. Maun
2. Moremi, South Gate
3. Third Bridge
4. Xakanaxa
5. North Gate
6. Khwai

Moremi and Khwai

The scariest trip I’ve ever had to plan. First time back in Botswana as an adult, and the first time doing it as a couple with nobody else’s vehicle to follow.

We needed it more than we let on. We’d come back from Dubai and the settling took years longer than either of us expected. Work wasn’t going well. Not much was, if I’m honest. This was the first time in a long time we could properly switch off.

The planning made it simple in the end. Months of reading and a handful of people who really know that country, and by the time we landed there wasn’t much left to be nervous about.

Johannesburg first, a few nights, sorting out the last of it. Then the bush flight to Maun.

I fell for Maun straight away. Very African, and somehow majestic with it. Good restaurants, new shopping centres, fuel, lodges. Everything you need to load up before you go in. We stayed at Sitatunga on Ed’s recommendation and it was the right call. Two or three days to rest, finish the last of the work over Starlink, then collect the vehicle from Bushlore. They made all of it easy. Then straight out into the bush.

Moremi first, and I’d never been. An elephant came to the edge of camp while we were having breakfast, and then he simply stayed. Hours of him. Completely at ease, feeding away, no interest in us whatsoever. It made breaking camp almost impossible. We took the tent down around him at about a tenth of the usual speed and neither of us was in any hurry to finish.

Then the long drive down to Third Bridge. Water levels were kind and the bridges were sound. Game everywhere. Long drives, sundowners you’d not believe, lion calling every night. There was a hyena working the camp, too close and too comfortable, and on our third day a ranger had to deal with him. People feed them and that’s how it ends. Hippo in camp as well, and a troop of thoroughly dishonest monkeys who had a proper go at our breakfast.

Gin and tonics by the river most afternoons.

We turned north and east after that. Xakanaxa was full, as it always is, so we drove the long way round with stops at the hippo pools. Hundreds of them in one stretch of water big enough to call a lake. That section is more treacherous, deeper water and thicker mud, and it was the first real test of the vehicle. It didn’t let us down once.

North Gate again felt like a different world. The whole of Moremi does that. Every hour you’re somewhere else.

Then on to Khwai, the community concession, looked after beautifully and busier than anywhere else we’d been. More traffic on the ring road. It made no difference to the game. We saw everything, including lion close enough to feel it in your chest. We picked up a flat there off a mopane stump, which was the only proper hiccup of the trip.

That was where it landed on me that we had to go home. I sat and thought about just pushing north instead. Savuti, Chobe, Linyanti, up to Kasane. We decided to save it, and we went and did exactly that in 2026.

Back to Maun for a few more nights. One tank of fuel the whole way, plus a jerry can topped up at Khwai village.

That was our first tiptoe into Botswana as a pair, and it cemented the whole thing for me. Not just the country, though it did that too. It was the restart we needed, and I’ve been trying to get back to it ever since.

Photographs, 16