Is This The Most Extraordinary Family Adventure?

Botswana offers one of the most extraordinary travel experiences it’s possible to have. For a family, it’s a journey of learning and a thrilling immersion into the wild, says Lucy Cleland.

A Family Adventure In Botswana

As we clutch hot water bottles and mugs of coffee and hot chocolate, with the rosy-fingered dawn flooding the horizon, the Toyota Land Cruiser submerges onto its watery track, cutting across the African delta on the hunt for the elusive leopard. Bucking its way along the muddy bottom of the aquatic channel, the vehicle – driven expertly by our guide, Gee – shows off its brutish muscle and my children and I can only wonder whether we’re in a jeep, a submarine or a boat… Our adrenaline is pumping, senses alive.

Welcome to Vumbura Plains in the northwest section of the Okavango Delta, the safari heartland of Botswana – which offers some of the most pristine, rich wildlife in the world. We’ve been whisked to this otherworldly land thanks to Yellow Zebra, whose expertise lies in designing trips from the ground up with experienced staff who are either former professional safari guides or camp managers. It means a souped-up, insider-level approach to safari planning, which starts before you even reach Africa.

They say Botswana’s fortunes turned with a termite nest. They can burrow up to 70m below ground; their visible mounds (some vast) punctuating an otherwise flat horizon like trig points. These industrious beasts, so the legend goes, first unearthed the diamonds in the 1950s that would assure Botswana’s future prosperity. Before that, the country languished as the third poorest in the world.

Welcome to Vumbura Plains in the northwest section of the Okavango Delta, the safari heartland of Botswana.

Botswana is not without its challenges though. A prolonged drought lingers. While we bask in the luxury of three Wilderness camps (and very much bask we do) on our nine-night safari – complete with smoothie stations, bush picnics and private plunge pools – many Batswana go without water for days on end. Unemployment remains high too.

But here, in the wild sage-scented brush, the animals reign. At Vumbura, we watch as the Hippo pride of lions (they all have names) attempts to take down a giraffe, resting, belly low, between their strikes. The normally water-shy big cats are well adapted to the delta, using it to cool off in. This allows them to hunt in the heat of the day – unique to Botswana. But now is not our time to witness a kill, and we leave them to slink off and sleep in the sun.

I’m struck by the children’s ease and maturity in which they interact with this experience, so unlike anything they’ve had before. There’s no grouching when the alarm goes off at 5:30 am, no complaining about sitting in a vehicle for five hours; they listen to Gee, and imbibe what he has to say with a thirst I’ve not seen before. By the end of our trip, they’ve played who can spit the impala poo furthest; they’ve been on morning walks with a rifle for company and late-night drives where the eyes of crocodiles light up on the riverside, porcupines scuttle in front of the headlights and civet cats prowl through the long grass. They know every collective noun, and have seen pretty much all of the animals we’d been promised, including the rare African painted dog (and their pups).

‘I’m struck by the children’s ease and maturity in which they interact with this experience, so unlike anything they’ve had before.’ (Romilly and Hector at Vumbura Plains; Romilly and Hector out on patrol with Gee)

In our second Wilderness camp, DumaTau – meaning roar of the lion – the experience shifts. More modern and chic with a big pool, shop and even a spa and gym, it sits in elephant country, nestled along the papyrus-lined Linyanti River which separates us from Namibia. The area is full of the elephants’ favoured mopane trees – too thick, green and bushy come summer to penetrate, but now, in winter, the skeletal trunks and branches offer the last bits of sustenance for them until the rains come. Here, conservation and tourism intertwine. Botswana has dedicated 40 percent of its land to conservation, with Wilderness, which has operated since 1983, at the vanguard of sustainable tourism. The camp is fully solar-powered and each detail is designed to leave the lightest possible footprint.

Yet, contradictions exist. Botswana has reinstated controlled hunting in areas where animal populations can sustain it, a decision driven by both conservation and economics. It’s a delicate balance: ensuring that wildlife thrives while also addressing the realities of rural livelihoods. The country’s top exports – diamonds, beef and tourism – each play a role in this complex equation.

Tracking the animals is an art, and our guide, Niq, is a master. He reads the land like a book, noting the warning calls of baboons, the squawk of a red-billed spurfowl and the circling of vultures. He spots a leopard’s kill – a gutted impala draped in a tree – before we catch sight of the cat itself, asleep, hidden in a camouflaged den.

Qorokwe, our final stop reached by another tiny plane, reveals a different side of the delta.

DumaTau is the camp to take to the water. The children try their hand at fishing for tilapia and tiger fish, and we see huge pods of hippo – 40 heads or so – and strings of elephants swimming across the channel before sloping back to camp dazzled by yet another kaleidoscopic sunset.

As we sip Amarula by the fire, Niq recounts how Botswana has transformed in his lifetime. Born in 1984, he remembers when tourism was still in its infancy, when safaris were primarily about hunting. Now, the industry has evolved, with photography safaris leading the way. At night, we fall asleep to the sloshing of hippos in the water outside our tent.

Qorokwe, our final stop reached by another tiny plane, reveals a different side of the delta. Here, the impact of drought is more stark. The waterhole has dried up. And poaching, which surged during the pandemic, has wiped out the area’s rhino population. But the bush is resilient. The morning drives have become like a meditation in the bristling heat, until we happen upon a full-bellied male lion licking his blood-stained lips. His fresh prey – a buffalo – lies close by in a bush with his innards hollowed out. We must have only just missed the kill.

Lucy & Romilly

The intimacy of Botswana’s safari experience is unlike any other. With strict limits on vehicles – only two per sighting – animals remain relaxed, unperturbed by hordes of tourists. This sense of exclusivity is part of what makes a trip here so eye-wateringly expensive, but it’s also what makes it extraordinary. The feeling of being alone in the wilderness, of really coexisting with nature, is priceless – and leaves us, occasionally, speechless.

BOOK IT

Yellow Zebra offers nine nights in Botswana, including all flights and transfers, with two nights at each camp and all F&B and scheduled safari activities, from £8,599 (low season) to £25,045 (high season) per person based on two adults adults and two children (12 and under). yellowzebrasafaris.com/botswana

Lucy’s return flights from London Heathrow to Maun via Johannesburg had a carbon footprint of 2,933.5kg of CO2e per person.