Makgadikgadi & the Salt Pans
One of Botswana's most extraordinary landscapes — an immense expanse of salt pans, grassland and semi-arid wilderness on the remnants of an ancient super-lake — paired with the Boteti River, the dry-season lifeline that borders it to the west.
Two regions: pans & river
2 regionsMakgadikgadi Region — the great salt pans
One of Botswana's most extraordinary landscapes: an immense expanse of salt pans, grassland and semi-arid wilderness on the remnants of an ancient super-lake, in the country's south and east. In the dry season the pans become brilliant white expanses stretching to the horizon; with the rains, grasslands regenerate and wildlife returns. The region is known for a zebra and wildebeest migration — described by some in the trade as one of Africa's great, less-publicised wildlife movements, though the scale of the comparison is not independently verified — alongside meerkat encounters, desert-adapted wildlife, flamingos, pelicans and exceptional star-filled skies. This is not primarily a Big Five destination: its appeal lies in vast landscapes, migration and culture.
Not a single pan but many pans interspersed with sandy desert, covering roughly 16,000 square kilometres (around 6,200 square miles) in the Kalahari basin — the bed of the ancient Lake Makgadikgadi. The largest pans, Sowa and Ntwetwe, are surrounded by smaller pans; north of these lie Kudiakam, Nxai and Kaucaca Pans. Landmarks: Kubu Island, a rocky granite outcrop on Sowa Pan studded with ancient baobabs and considered sacred by local communities; and Nxai Pan National Park, home to Baines' Baobabs — painted by explorer Thomas Baines in 1862 and said to look much as they did then, a claim worth confirming rather than treating as settled fact. Signature activities: quad-biking on the open pans, San cultural walks, habituated meerkat encounters, and sleeping out under an open sky on the pan itself. Access: charter flights from Maun and most northern Botswana camps, or by 4x4 with very little exception.
Boteti River Region — where the river meets the Kalahari
The Boteti River forms the ecological transition between the Makgadikgadi and the Kalahari, flowing from the Okavango Delta via the Thamalakane River near Maun before terminating at Ntwetwe Pan, and forming the Makgadikgadi's natural western border. For years the river ran dry; stronger Delta floods in recent decades restored the surrounding landscape and an important wildlife corridor. It now draws elephant, zebra, wildebeest, giraffe and numerous antelope, especially in the dry months when water is scarce elsewhere — more conventional game viewing than the open pans, while retaining Makgadikgadi's sense of scale.
The river's revival is sometimes described as the endpoint of a "new" zebra migration and one of the longest land-mammal migrations in Africa — both widely repeated claims that are not independently sourced, so worth framing to clients as a notable regional phenomenon rather than a confirmed record.
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