Luxury Botswana
Safaris & Tours
Okovango Delta
Chobe National Park
Linyante
The Kalahari
Makgadikgado Pans
Bespoke Safari Tours in Botswana
Botswana made a decision the rest of Africa didn’t. Decades ago, while its southern Africa safari destination neighbours chased volume, Botswana chose the opposite - fewer beds, larger wilderness, vehicles you can count on one hand at a sighting. It’s why a luxury Botswana safari feels unlike anywhere else on the continent.
This is a country that rewards the unhurried traveler. The Okavango is the only place on earth where you can drift past elephants in a dugout canoe at eye level; an hour’s flight north, Chobe holds the densest elephant population in Africa; and away to the southwest, the Kalahari stretches into a silence so complete it feels like a different planet. A bespoke safari in Botswana is less an itinerary than a sequence of contrasts - water and desert, flight and stillness, the wild and the deeply comfortable.
For five decades, we’ve built tailormade Botswana safari tours for travelers who want the rarest version of Africa: low on crowds, high on detail, and shaped entirely around how you want to travel. A Botswana safari holiday with us might be a water-and-land combination through the Delta and Chobe, a family trip pitched into the malaria-free Kalahari, or an ultra-private honeymoon under canvas - but every trip is handmade, and every camp is chosen because we’ve visited it ourselves.
Where to Visit on Your Botswana Safari
Where Water Meets WildernessThe Okavango Delta
If Botswana has a single image the world recognizes, it’s this - a fan of channels, lagoons, and palm islands spilling across the Kalahari sands, fed each year by floodwaters that travel a thousand kilometers from the Angolan highlands. The Okavango is the world’s largest inland delta and UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it does something no other safari landscape can: it puts you in the water. A luxury Botswana safari in the Delta moves by mokoro, by motorboat, and by open vehicle, so a single morning might take you from poling silently past a herd of red lechwe to tracking lion on a dry island by lunchtime.
The Delta’s permanent water draws extraordinary concentrations of game into a small space - elephant, hippo, buffalo, and the predators that follow them - and the camps here, many set on private concessions inside or bordering Moremi Game Reserve, are among the finest in Africa.
Home to Africa's GiantsChobe National Park
Chobe is elephant country, and the numbers do the talking - northern Botswana holds well over 120,000 elephants, the largest population anywhere on the continent, and in the dry months they gather along the Chobe River in herds that run into the hundreds. A Botswana elephant safari here is unlike anywhere else: you watch from a boat as families wade and swim across the channels at sunset, the light going copper behind them, the riverbank thick with buffalo, hippo, and birdlife.
Again, it is the water itself which makes a luxury Chobe safari distinctive. Game drives are paired with river cruises and, for those who want it, photographic boats fitted out for serious lenses. Chobe sits close to Kasane airport and just an hour from Victoria Falls, which makes it the natural anchor for a wider Southern African journey.
Solitude in the Wild HeartLinyante & The Private Concessions
For travelers who want Botswana at its most exclusive, the private concessions of the Linyanti, Selinda, and Kwando are where the country quietly excels. These are vast tracts of wilderness - Wildlife Management Areas leased to a single operator - which means no day visitors, no convoy of vehicles, and the freedom to go off-road and follow a sighting wherever it leads. The result is some of the lowest guest-to-wildlife ratios in Africa, and the kind of unhurried, uninterrupted game viewing that the busier parks elsewhere on the continent simply can’t promise.
The Linyanti is also one of Africa’s great strongholds for the endangered African wild dog, and its seasonal floodplains and woodlands draw big herds of elephant and the predators - lion, leopard, hyena - that shadow them. These are the camps we recommend to repeat safari-goers and to anyone for whom exclusivity isn’t a luxury but the whole point. Small, remote, and beautifully run, they’re the reason Botswana has the reputation it does.
Ancient Salt Pans, Endless HorizonsThe Kalahari & Makgadikgadi Pans
To understand Botswana properly, you can’t focus only on the uique water systems. South and east of the Delta, the land opens into the Kalahari and the Makgadikgadi - desert, salt pan, and grassland on a scale that resets your sense of distance. The Central Kalahari is one of the largest protected areas on earth, home to black-maned Kalahari lions, oryx, and the dramatic green-season game-viewing of Deception Valley. The Makgadikgadi pans, meanwhile, are the bed of a long-vanished super-lake - a blinding white horizon broken only by ancient baobabs and, in the wet months, one of Africa's last great zebra migrations.
A custom Botswana safari in the desert trades the abundance of the Delta for something stranger and more intimate: sleeping out under the Milky Way on the pans, walking with San bushmen trackers, sitting quietly beside a colony of habituated meerkats as they use your shoulder as a lookout post. It's the counterpoint that turns a good Botswana itinerary into a complete one — and, being largely malaria-free, it's a natural fit for families.
Our Top Botswana Safari Packages & Itineraries
Cape Town & Botswana Victoria Falls Extension
On Demand Departures: 16 days; from $19,210/person
When to Visit Botswana for Safari
For over fifty years, EW Travel has guided thousands of explorers to the right place at the right time - and in Botswana, timing matters more than almost anywhere. The country runs on two rhythms, and the trip you'll have shifts entirely depending on which one you follow.
The quirk worth knowing first: the Okavango's flood arrives in the dry season, so the Delta is at its most spectacular precisely when the rest of the bush is at its driest. We begin every bespoke Botswana safari with a conversation about what you most want to see, then build the itinerary around the season that delivers it.
Dry Season
(May - October)
This is the classic window for a luxury Botswana safari. As the land dries out, wildlife funnels toward the permanent water of the Delta and the Chobe River, and game viewing becomes both reliable and dramatic - predators concentrate, the elephant herds along the Chobe swell into the hundreds, and the thinning bush makes everything easier to find. It’s also when Okavango flood peaks (roughly June to August), so this is the season for mokoro trips, boat safaris, and the water-based experiences that make Botswana unique.
Days are warm and clear; nights, especially in June and July, turn properly cold around the fire. These are the peak months, and because Botswana caps visitor numbers so tightly, the best camps book out a year or more ahead.
(November - April)
The summer rains transform Botswana. The Kalahari and Makgadikgadi, austere and empty for most of the year, erupt into green - and with the grass come the zebra migration, the newborn antelope, and the predators that follow them into Deception Valley. This is the photographer's season: dramatic skies, saturated color, and far fewer vehicles in camp. It's also when rates soften and availability opens up, which makes it a genuinely excellent choice for travelers who've done the dry-season circuit before.
It's the prime window for the desert and the pans, and the best time for birdlife across the whole country, as the migrants arrive and the resident species come into breeding plumage. The trade-off is that some Delta camps reduce activities or close briefly at the height of the rains, and afternoon storms are part of the experience - but for the right traveler, wet-season Botswana is the country at its most alive.
Wet Season
Tailoring Your Botswana Safari
The real advantage of building a luxury Botswana safari holiday from scratch is that it bends to fit the people traveling it - a honeymoon and a family adventure ask for very different things. Here’s how we tailor a trip around who’s coming and what matters most to them.
Botswana Safari Honeymoons
Few countries are better suited to a safari honeymoon. Botswana's camps are small - often eight or ten tents - and built for privacy, with the kind of remote, fly-in seclusion that means it can feel as though you have the wilderness to yourselves.
We pair the romance of the Delta (private dinners on a deck above the water, a mokoro at sunset) with a few nights somewhere with a pool and a view, and we'll quietly arrange the champagne, the surprise sleep-out under the stars, and everything in between.
Family Safaris in Botswana
Botswana works beautifully for families who plan carefully. The Kalahari and Makgadikgadi are largely malaria-free, which makes them a sensible base for younger children, while the Delta and Chobe - both malaria areas - are better suited to families with older kids who can take prophylaxis.
Many camps offer family tents, private vehicles and guides, and children's programs built around tracking, bushcraft, and time with San guides. Tell us the ages of your travelers and we'll match you to the right camps and the right region.
Choosing Your Camps & Lodges
The right luxury safari camp in Botswana depends on the season, the region, and how you like to travel. We narrow hundreds of options down to the handful that fit your trip: water camps for the Delta in flood, classic tented camps in the Linyanti for big-game density, design-led lodges on the Chobe, and remote desert camps in the Kalahari. Every camp on your itinerary is there for a reason.
Your Questions, Answered
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We recommend a minimum of six to seven nights for a bespoke Botswana safari to make the internal flights worthwhile and to combine at least two contrasting regions - typically the Okavango Delta with either Chobe or the Kalahari. Most clients build a 7–10 night Botswana itinerary, and those combining their trip with Victoria Falls in Zambia or Cape Town in South Africa are usually travelling for 12–14 days.
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Yes - and many of our clients do. Chobe sits roughly an hour from Victoria Falls by road, so the Falls slot naturally onto the end of a Botswana itinerary. Botswana also combines easily with Cape Town and the South African winelands for travelers who want to pair the bush with a city and the coast.
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Exceptionally. Northern Botswana holds the largest elephant population in Africa - more than 120,000 - and Chobe National Park offers some of the best elephant viewing on the continent, particularly from the water in the dry season when the herds gather along the river.
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Yes, with some planning. The Kalahari and Makgadikgadi are largely malaria-free and well suited to younger children, while the Delta and Chobe are malaria areas better suited to older children on prophylaxis. Many camps offer family accommodation, private vehicles, and dedicated children's activities - tell us your travelers' ages and we'll build the trip accordingly.
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Botswana is one of Africa's most stable and well-regulated countries, and the camps and concessions we use operate to the highest standards of safety. Travel between camps is by light aircraft and private transfer, and we've been sending clients here for over five decades - we plan every itinerary to keep it seamless from arrival to departure.
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Most travelers from the UK, US, EU, Canada, and Australia can enter Botswana visa-free for tourism stays of up to 90 days, with a passport valid for at least six months. Requirements do change, so we'll confirm the current rules for your nationality as part of your booking.
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