Travel Ideas

The Kalahari isn’t the barest desert in the world and attracts loads of wildlife after the rains come. It’s crisscrossed with Land Rover tracks but there’s no reason why you should see anyone if you don’t want to.

A Land Rover with plenty (we mean plenty, turn back when you go below 75 litres) of water is an essential and you may need some source of fire to turn back any curious lions.

If you’re really lucky you might meet a couple of Bushmen, or San, though they’ve mostly been persecuted to death or assimilation. To get the feeling of their magical way of life that’s now practically extinct read Laurence Van der Post’s The Lost World of the Kalahari Bushmen.

Look out for the honey bird that flies over your head and cries ‘Honey! Quick! Quick!’ when it finds a bee’s nest. It’s then good form to go and smoke out the bees, pull out the honey and leave a share for the bird.

You might be familiar with the semi-arid desert of the Kalahari from the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy which was set there.

The Kalahari covers much of Botswana and can be accessed from there, Namibia or South Africa.

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