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About Botswana

Botswana lies immediately to the north of South Africa and is bordered on the north and west by Namibia and on the north and east by Zimbabwe. A narrow strip of land on the northern border also connects it to Zambia. Its territory consists almost entirely of a broad, arid subtropical plateau, with some hills in the eastern part of the country.

The Kalahari Desert covers most of the country with the national parks covering an additional 17 per cent. The vast arid Kalahari occupies much of north, central and western Botswana. The capital, Gaborone, is situated in the southeast of the country but it is Botswana's national parks and game reserves that are the real attraction.

Botswana is one of the few remaining safari destinations that still provides a wonderful sense of remote Africa. Its expansive game parks and preserves are still largely undeveloped and untamed, and offer a diverse array of wildlife as that found anywhere else. In the extreme northwest, the Okavango River carries it's precious waters into the Kalahari sands, creating the largest inland river delta in the world. While the Okavango Delta is inhabited by fewer large game animals in comparison to other areas of Botswana, its clear waters, lagoons and myriad small islands are home to an astounding variety of birds, plants, and smaller species of animals. The Moremi Wildlife Reserve, in the northeast corner of the Okavango Delta, is one the best game-viewing areas in Botswana and the nearby Chobe National Park, a beautiful grassland reserve, has gained international fame for its abundant elephant population. Southeast of Chobe are Botswana's enormous Makgadikgadi salt pans, home to large herds of blue wildebeest, several antelope species, and those international lovers of salt pans, flamingos.

Almost the entire remaining portion of the country is covered by the Kalahari Desert--a varied environment of sand, savanna, and grassland. Although this area of Botswana is only sparsely inhabited by humans, it is one of the richest wildlife regions in all of Africa. Botswana's two largest parks, the Central Kalahari Game reserve and Gemsbok National Park, are found in this region.

In the north the magnificent Okavango waterway, with its green and fertile plains, flows straight into a sea of sand, the Kalahari Desert, and vanishes. Part of the Kalahari is a wilderness, with sands largely covered in sweet grasses. Though sparse, these grasslands support some of the largest herds of game on the continent of Africa, as well as a huge cattle population.

At the heart of Botswana's ever growing tourist industry is the village of Maun, in the country's northwest. Maun is linked to Francistown in the east by road and also has a busy airfield. The town provides ready access to the Okavango Delta, the Moremi Wildlife Reserve, Lake Ngami, and the Makgadikgadi and Nxai salt pans, so it is the centre of much of the country's safari business.