It seems, on some level, like an im-possibility. In the semi-arid highlands of Angola, hundreds of trickling streams join forces with two mighty rivers, the Cuito and the Cubango, which flow through Namibia and into Botswana as the Okavango, then spill into a fan-shaped 4,600-square-mile wetland before vanishing into the sands of the Kalahari Desert. Poof.
But it's really more like a miracle. Rains that fall in Angola during the previous wet season, from November through May, propel the Okavango River along its 1,000-mile downhill course in June, pushing with it 2.5 trillion gallons of water that fuel a tsunami of life through a massive network of palm islands, channels, and lagoons: Botswana's Okavango Delta. As the water engulfs the previous season's parched landscape, virtually everything it touches is reborn. The dry season drains the delta, but local rains in the month of December provide some relief before the floods sweep through again six months later. If a time comes when this cycle stops playing out like clockwork, it will affect the hundreds of Indigenous communities along its banks who depend on these life-giving waters.
UNESCO has protected the delta for a decade, and the organization is now collaborating with the governments of Angola, Botswana, and Namibia to extend the existing Okavango World Heritage Site upstream and into Angola. But the delta's protected status does not make it invulnerable. For years, pressures have been mounting from extractive industries in Namibia and Angola, still recovering from a hideous 27-year civil war, which threaten the lakes and rivers that supply the Okavango with water. Angola's growing development needs have caused rampant deforestation for valuable timber and agriculture. A water diversion project, currently on hold, could affect the system's flow to the Cubango, with consequences for the river's ability to recharge the Okavango. In Namibia a team of National Geographic researchers has exposed test drilling within the watershed by a Canadian oil exploration company. Though work paused last summer, the business holds a similar lease in Botswana near the delta. Even small shifts, like a 1 percent drop in water, could affect the patterns of elephants, those architects of the delta whose dung contains the seeds from which the palm islands grow. “It's a bit like knitting, isn't it?” says Dereck Joubert, the legendary National Geographic filmmaker and founder of Great Plains Conservation, which manages three lodges in the delta. “You unpick one piece and the whole thing falls apart.”
I'd been here once before during the June flood, when the delta appears from above like a terrarium of lustrous, mossy rocks. But this time I've arrived in September, during the dry season, when the plains wither to straw and thirsty animals gather by the river's last liquid arteries. Only now can it be crossed on foot. Combined with days journeying by motorboat and mokoro, a traditional canoe, this will allow me the trans-Okavango expedition I dream of.
We have flown north from Maun, the gateway to the Okavango, to the delta's panhandle, where seismic activity caused the river to suddenly fan out some 60,000 years ago. At Nxamaseri Island Lodge, a fishing camp on the main channel, I meet Mike Hill, a goateed, cargo-shorts-wearing South African. He's been in Botswana for three decades, guiding expeditions through his outfit, Endeavour Safaris.
The river twists like a garden hose tossed onto the grass. This emerald oasis provides a critical habitat for Africa's largest elephant population and endangered wild dogs, lions, cheetahs, rare aquatic-adapted antelopes, and some 500 species of birds. Hippos are the real danger here. (One recently ripped a hole in the side of Mike's vessel.) They tend to congregate in the deeper waters of the reed-lined side of the river, so we ride on the side backed by waving pom-poms of papyrus, floating root systems that the enormous creatures cannot stand on.
Rounding a corner, we come upon water that seems to churn at a rapid boil while making a loud pop-popping sound, like bongo drums. “A barbel run!” Mike exclaims. He's on his feet and casting a line into the water. The percussion is the smacking lips of countless barbel, a type of catfish, in a feeding frenzy. The barbel stealthily power the ecosystem's greatest nutrient cycle. Water draining out of the floodplains draws millions of minnows and other small fry into the main channel, where masses of lurking catfish run to the edges to feed, while tiger fish wait in deeper water for their turn to strike. Meanwhile, flocks of herons and egrets arrive to exploit the commotion, luring other predators to follow their lunch to the banks. In the wake of it all, the fish chum nourishes everything, even the plants.
Some say the barbel runs used to be much bigger. According to some scientists, climate change is making the delta hotter and dryer. It's not a stretch to envision a time when the volume of water flowing won't be sufficient to sustain the pattern, whether due to climate change or other human intervention. Today the barbel are running but not biting. Mike tucks away his rod.
We stop for the night on Itsatsa island. Our little bush camp is a hive of activity as Mike's team pitches tents and a petite cook named Pie stirs a cauldron of chicken curry over a campfire. Roughly half of the delta's workforce work in ecotourism. The industry has allowed many young people to remain in the region rather than seeking work elsewhere as they have in many other parts of the continent. Over whiskeys, Owner, a guide who is Bayei, one of five Indigenous tribes in the delta, describes how his grandfather used to hunt buffalo by grabbing them by the tail and sinking a sharp spear into their haunches. Fishing was a labor-intensive process of weaving baskets from reeds and laying them in the water to trap fish in the current.
Owner wants to turn his grandfather's island, just a few bends in the river from where we are now, into a camp, he says. Right now there's a window for Botswanans to petition the government for an inheritance claim on their ancestral lands. And a new policy, enacted in 2020, prioritizes tourism licenses for citizens, with the goal of economically empowering Botswanans who seek to forge a connection to their natural heritage. Work is also underway to establish the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), which would include the two river basins where Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe converge. Visitors would be able to travel among all five countries on a single visa, helping better distribute the benefits of tourism throughout the region. These developments could play an important role in preserving the area's micro-ecosystems and the communities who have depended on them for millennia.
From here, Mike and I branch east in the direction of Duba Plains, a private island concession spanning 81,500 acres, where we are greeted by two bull elephants yanking up papyrus and folding it into their pink mouths. The welcome wagon is soon joined by two men in a patrol skiff who interrogate Mike before radioing ahead to the lodge. Security is essential. In 2019, Botswana's newly elected government overturned the country's trophy-hunting ban on the grounds that controlling the large elephant population would reduce incidents of crop raiding and bring needed revenue to local communities. But in the years since, conservationists have cited concern over aerial surveys that indicate a major uptick in poaching, particularly in the north, and NGOs such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the Humane Society have voiced concern over continued trophy hunting in Botswana in light of increasing elephant deaths.
Duba's isolation has yielded a Noah's Ark of wildlife. As we arrive, a pod of hippos raise their meaty heads out of the water to yawn and grunt while two female elephants cautiously ford the river, nudging their babies along with their trunks like crossing guards. We spend the afternoon in a Land Cruiser, stalking an elusive leopard, rolling by a male lion waking from his nap, and watching nine wild dog puppies settle into their new den. Life, fertility, and abundance—even amid the privations of the dry season.
The next morning, after a brief helicopter ride over a vista of lily-pad-like islands, we meet our boatmen, who will be leading us by mokoro to Wilderness Jao camp. There's Tuff, who spouts facts with a schoolboy's earnestness; Captain, the most senior poler and the quietest; and Cruise, our “hippo repeller.” In the delta, you don't want to splash the water with a paddle, so long wooden poles are used to quietly propel the slender canoes through the shallows. Or fend off a disgruntled hippo.
As dusk gathers, the channel narrows to just a few feet wide and inches deep. Water lilies light the way like torches, each white or lavender bloom anchored to an edible root similar to a potato. The air is thrillingly pure, the haylike aroma of the sedge mixed with the scent of decomposing plants and mineral tang of water. The polers shove on as the trees fade to charcoal outlines and my clothing clings in a clammy chill. From the right comes the snort of hippos, whose tiny eyes glint yellow in the beam of our flashlights. Cruise slaps the side of his mokoro with his pole to create a distraction as Captain and Tuff glide us toward a hopeful constellation of light and the promise of a hot shower and a soft bed: Jao.
It's hard to fathom how Jao's fourth-generation Botswanan owners built the camp's five soaring treetop suites, let alone the on-site museum and nest-like pool pavilion, on this remote island surrounded by nearly 150,000 acres of private concession. But as at some of the delta's top camps in exclusive-use concessions, which can cost up to $1,500 per person per night in high season, guests are also paying for the protection of thousands of acres of pristine nature. Botswana's diamonds are the cornerstone of its economy, comprising 90 percent of its global exports, but the delta is its crown jewel. The country has historically managed a successful tourism model that is deliberately low-volume and high-cost. “It's one reason why the Okavango is not like the Masai Mara,” says Karen Ross, PhD, an ecologist who has championed the delta's UNESCO status.
A true trans-Okavango journey would entail traveling 250 miles by water from the northern panhandle to Maun, at the delta's southern edge. Being short on time, we fly to the dry floodplains of Kanana camp, where we planned to trek on foot. Before I left, Joubert had offered me advice for the trip, not without risks: “Walking in the bush is a combination of looking down at your feet and looking up at the horizon.” Which is what I do as we tread in silence along ancient elephant pathways. The trail is a palimpsest of their giant, pancake-round tracks and the lobed pads of hyenas or toes of civets. We pass lion droppings composed of teeth and bones and lechwe horns; artifacts of the less fortunate. Approaching a stand of trees, Mike keeps a hand on his rifle and his ear cocked. Elephants at a distance will leave you alone, he'd told me that morning, though one must steer clear of matriarchs with their young. What you want to avoid while on foot is a buffalo—cranky and combative, they're the bullies of the bush.
We settle into a rhythm, sipping water sparingly. Ahead, two large bull elephants are browsing on a tree by a lagoon. Spotting us, one raises his head and flares his leathery ears. Mike signals to slowly backtrack along the water's edge, where several hippos, feeling equally territorial, begin snorting and honking. One curious elephant strolls over toward my spot behind a fallen tree trunk. “Heyyy, my boy,” Mike says, in the calmly confident voice you might use on a Labrador retriever. The creature peers at us for a few long seconds as my pulse hammers in my chest. The elephant raises his trunk and turns away. For the rest of the walk, I'm buoyed by the exhilaration of having experienced something rare—a live-wire connection with a five-ton wild beast. Almost nine miles after setting out, we enter andBeyond Xaranna Okavango Delta Camp filthy, tired, radiant.
On our last day we ride bicycles along elephant paths, hopping over berms and kicking up dust like the herd of buffalo that thunders past us on the next plain. After days of clear skies, a single gauzy cumulus cloud hangs in the air. In Setswana, pula means “rain”; it's also the name of the national currency. In a few months, December's light rains will arrive, quenching parched plains and filling empty lagoons for a bit of relief. It will be five more months before the flooding ignites the cycle again. The Okavango Delta isn't just a miracle. It is also a metaphor. Just as the tiny minnow powers the barbel run in the river, which sustains various larger creatures, so do each of our individual choices contribute to the interwoven tapestry of the human species. What Joubert advised me about walking is just as true of conservation: Look down and look up, at the little picture and the big, now and in the future, one step at a time.
Plan it
Condé Nast Traveler Top Travel specialist Cherri Briggs, founder of Explore Inc., orchestrated our multifaceted six-night trans-Okavango trip with signature deftness, recruiting guide Mike Hill of Endeavour Safaris, who has led trips in Botswana for more than three decades. (Endeavour is also a pioneer of accessible safaris for travelers with disabilities.) First, we arrived by bush plane at Nxamaseri Island Lodge, a modest but congenial fishing camp in the Okavango panhandle. We slept the next few nights in high comfort, first by floating into Duba Concession and Duba Plains Camp, the delta's only Relais & Châteaux lodging. Helicopter Horizons whisked us to a wild island inside Jao Concession, where we embarked on a six-mile mokoro ride to Wilderness Jao, steered by the camp's guides. The design here is a feat of engineering and artistry, with five soaring suites and two villas made from wood, glass, and recycled materials. We flew onward to Ker & Downey's Kanana on the Xudum River, which, though simpler in concept, was full of soul: small canvas tents that allowed us to take in the bird and animal life, warm service, and expert guiding. Next, we trekked eight and a half miles to andBeyond Xaranna Okavango Delta Camp and were greeted by a splashing, breeding herd of elephants in the lagoon outside the main guest area. After another helicopter ride, we reached Machaba Safaris' Kiri Camp, a new property with modern African-themed decor. It sits on a floodplain known for lion and buffalo interactions, which was perfect terrain for a bicycle safari led by Natural Selection's Kyle MacIntyre, who grew up in the delta in a family of guides. A trans-Okavango trip can be done nearly all year long, but the waterway is best traversed by boat and mokoro in August and September, when the warmer weather brings out much of the animal life. Walking safaris are possible anytime from April through December, depending on rainfall.
This article appeared in the April 2024 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
