For those who crave solitude and silence (and the odd meerkat on your head), this stark lunar landscape will tickle your fancy.
Southeast of the Okavango Delta, surrounded by the Kalahari Desert, you’ll find the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, the largest salt flats on earth – and Botswana’s most unusual African safari experience. Visible from space, the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans are the remains of what was once an ancient super-lake, stretching out over almost 10,000 salty square miles.
But it’s not without spectacular game-viewing. In the dry season, antelope, meerkats and brown hyenas dot the landscape while thirsty elephants huddle along the Boteti River. And as the rains begin to fall, clouds of cotton candy flamingos descend on the pans, and enormous herds of zebra and wildebeest migrate to their edges. Makgadikgadi is a veritable smorgasbord for hungry predators, set against granite outcrops and squat baobabs.
When you visit the Makgadikgadi depends on what type of safari you’re after. The season you choose decides whether you find yourself among zebra herds moving across green pans, or crossing sun-baked salt on a quad bike under an empty sky. It shapes the safari you’ll have, and the price you’ll pay for it.
Green Season
It’s the green season! Hot, humid and rains are a bit unpredictable, but the reward is one of Africa’s great, lesser-known migrations in full swing. The rains keep grass lush, which Zebra herds graze in their thousands. Afternoon storms roll in fast, but clear even faster, turning the sky dramatic and the pans briefly reflective.
Green Season
The wettest month of the year, and the most dramatic. Zebra herds remain scattered across the eastern pans, flamingos are settling in to breed on the Sua Pan, and the grassland is as green as the Makgadikgadi ever gets. The landscape is unrecognisable from its dry-season self.
Green Season
Rainfall starts to ease, though thunderstorms are still a regular fixture. Zebra herds begin massing on the pans’ western edge ahead of their return migration north. It’s one of the last real chances to catch the migration before the herds move on. Flamingo chicks start hatching on Sua Pan.
Secret Season
The end of the rainy season is here. Zebra herds are mostly gone, the pans are still too soft to explore by quad bike, and the bush holds onto a little more green before the dry months set in. Quiet, changeable, and rewarding for anyone who likes their safari uncrowded.
Secret Season
The dry season sets in. Days are warm and pleasant, nights turn crisp, and the pans begin to firm up underfoot – though it’s usually still a touch early for quad biking. Wildlife starts concentrating around the Boteti River in the park’s west as the rest of the landscape dries out.
Peak Season
Peak dry season. The pans are bone dry and rock hard – prime conditions for quad biking out to Kubu Island’s baobabs. The Boteti River becomes the park’s main draw, pulling in elephants, zebras, and antelope from the parched interior. Mornings are properly cold; layer up.
Peak Season
High season begins. Days are warm and clear, nights are the coldest of the year, and the pans are at their most otherworldly – vast, white and silent enough to hear your own heartbeat. Wildlife viewing along the Boteti River stays excellent as animals cling to the last reliable water.
Peak Season
Still cool, still dry, still spectacular for exploring the pans by quad bike or on foot with habituated meerkat colonies. The Boteti River keeps drawing thirsty wildlife in numbers, and visibility is at its best with the bush thinned right out.
Peak Season
Temperatures start climbing again, but the dry-season game viewing only gets better for it. Wildlife crowds around the Boteti’s remaining water, and the pans stay firm and accessible for quad biking, even as the heat starts building toward month’s end.
Peak Season
The hottest, driest month of the year, and the dry season’s last hurrah. Animals jostle for the last of the water at the Boteti River, the pans shimmer with heat haze, and the whole landscape feels like it’s holding its breath for the rains.
Secret Season
The first rains break the heat, the dust settles, and the pans begin their slow transformation back to green. Zebra herds start drifting back in from the north, and the landscape shows its first signs of life after months of dry season.
Green Season
Warm, stormy and increasingly green. Zebra herds keep arriving from the north in growing numbers, and flamingos begin gathering on the Sua Pan. Dramatic afternoon storms roll in most days, lighting up the sky over the stark landscape.
The Makgadikgadi’s stretches of cracked white salt pans could easily be mistaken for the moon. Until you realise its crusty surface is rutted with hoofprints – the zebra migration pressed into its crust! Salt gives way to palm-studded islands and shrubby desert grassland, home turf for the desert-adapted wildlife where meerkats stand watch from their sandy turrets.
The Makgadikgadi isn’t where you come to find abundant wildlife crawling around every corner. It’s about the surprise of what emerges from all that stark, shimmering nothing. Hang out with habituated meerkat colonies, spot a brown hyena or bat-eared fox slipping past at dusk, or even a lion skulking across the pan. Come the wet season, Sua Pan turns flamingo-pink with breeding flocks, and thousands of zebra thunder through on Africa’s second-largest mammal migration.
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Nothing beats the magic of the Delta. Wild waterways, unbelievable wildlife, and that feeling that you’ve completely disappeared into nature.
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For me, safari is all about the small things. The quiet sunrise drives, the stories around the fire, and the feeling that Africa gets under your skin.
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It depends on what you’re chasing. The dry winter (May–October) is all about lunar-like emptiness, quad biking across endless horizons and meerkats using your head as a lookout. The wet summer (November–April) transforms the pans into shimmering lakes, drawing flamingos by the thousands and Africa’s second-largest zebra migration. Two completely different safaris.
Meerkats are the scene-stealers — impossibly cute and often far too bold. Add in desert-adapted wildlife like brown hyena, aardwolf, ostrich, jackal and cheetah, plus elephants along the Boteti River. And when the rains arrive, the zebra and wildebeest migration sweeps in, with predators right behind.
Yes — in fact, the Makgadikgadi is home to Africa’s second-largest zebra migration. Between December and March, tens of thousands of striped nomads arrive, turning the stark pans into a moving sea of black and white. Lions and hyenas happily follow the buffet.
Absolutely. Spending time with the San is an absolute highlight here (a must, in our opinion). You’ll learn about their survival skills, traditions and stories that stretch back millennia. They’ll show you how to track animals, forage in the desert and understand the land in a way science still can’t quite explain.
Think beyond the 4×4. Try quad biking into the nothingness, walking safaris with the San bushmen, or sleeping out on the pans (seasonal) under a sky crammed with stars. Birding, horse riding, and meerkat encounters also make it a safari menu like no other.
In the dry winter, the pans are cracked and empty — a surreal, lunar-like vast desert. In the wet summer, the pans become a shallow, shimmering lake where wildlife appears to walk on water.
Southeast of the Okavango Delta, wrapped by the Kalahari, the pans sit in central Botswana. The easiest way in is to fly to Maun or Kasane, then hop on a light aircraft to your camp.
This is not where you come to see the Big 5. The Makgadikgadi Pans isn’t as game-rich as the delta, but you come for the contrast and the experience. You will walk away with experiences and stories you cannot get anywhere else. The game you’ll see here is desert-adapted — you come for meerkats, brown hyena, aardwolf, ostrich, and cheetah. In season, you’ll see huge herds of zebra and wildebeest with predators in tow.
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