An estimated 15 000 to 20 000 zebras roam the 4 900 km2 wilderness within the national park. Your best chance of seeing large herds is during winter when they are forced to come to the Boteti River to drink.

We encountered our first elephants soon after entering the park at Makgadikgadi’s north gate, close to the village of Phuduhudu.

From the gate, it’s a sandy, 31 km-drive to Khumaga campsite, on the western boundary of the park next to the Boteti River. Like two old gents out for a constitutional, the bull elephants strolled down the sandy track towards the river. There was no space to pass them, so we stopped to munch on cheese rolls while waiting for them to clear off.

The elephants are a sign that things have changed in this part of the world. In the early 1990s, the Boteti River had all but dried up, bar a few isolated pools. Now, after two years of good rains in the Angolan highlands, the river is flowing again. You can see it from the air as it snakes southwards towards the Kalahari like a giant watery python.

And by all accounts it’s here to stay – at least for a while. Before entering the park, we made a detour to a safari camp called Meno a Kwena on the opposite bank of the river (outside the park). When the river dried up, Meno a Kwena’s owner David Dugmore started pumping water in the riverbed. Initially, he did it to keep the game around for his guests, but soon it became a matter of life and death. His pumps ran 24 hours a day on diesel that he bought out of his own pocket.

“Everyone thought I was nuts,” Dave told us. “But what else can you do when at night you hear a thousand zebras trying to suck water from the sand?”
The zebras are one of Makgadikgadi’s big drawcards. In the winter months large herds congregate around the Boteti as the pans to the east dry up. When the first good rains fall, they move back to the plains.

Rain has already fallen, so we’ve missed the herd by a few weeks, but all around the riverbed you can see bleached bones, evidence that at certain times of the year survival is a struggle.
After bidding Monika and Heidi goodnight, I crawl into my two-man tent. When I wake just before 5 am for an early start, I hear a lion roar upriver. Ah, there’s the other reason for all those bones…

The Khumaga campsite was once a “convenient” stopover for visitors travelling between the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the Okavango Delta, but the newly flowing Boteti River has changed all that.

The main park entrance (about 2 km from the campsite) is deserted when we stop there during the morning. The large gate is unlocked, so we can drive through to take a look.
Where a road from the village on the opposite bank once led straight here, it now nosedives into the river. We watch as a boat roars across to pick up two men waiting to get to work in the national park.
“Nice commute,” says James, who spent nine years working in London before moving to Botswana. Later, we backtrack 8 km past the campsite, down to the riverbed. A rheumy-eyed hippo grunts and splashes in the river, alongside some white-faced duck that admire their reflections in the water.
The hippo is one of a small pod that survived all those dry years in a single green, sludgy pool. It’s mid-morning and some elephants are coming down to drink in twos and threes.

As we watch, I can hear the sound of a bakkie, out of sight. The engine revs, stutters and then stops. And then James hears an elephant trumpet. Oh dear, that must be Monika and Heidi heading off.
Clearly, they’ve decided to take James’s advice and retreat to the relative safety of a campsite called Planet Baobab near the settlement of Gweta on the main road. Outside the park.

Botswana’s rainy season starts in November and can go right through to April.

The road from Khumaga to Njuca Hills, an isolated campsite to the east, leads us out of the scrubby bush and into the rolling grassland that the zebras favour.

Thunderclouds are clotting together on the horizon and in the distance vultures ride the thermals. About two-thirds of the way to Njuca Hills, the first of the striped-pyjama brigade put in an appearance. I count: 9, 50, 70… The zebras seem to be heading north-west in the direction of the rain that has started to fall behind us.

The landmark we’re aiming for is a radio tower in the distance. Njuca Hills are only slight rises
in an otherwise flat landscape, but each hill has its own campsite and a shady stand of trees. Ablution facilities are simple: a long drop and bucket shower, with concrete floors, neatly screened by poles.

Apart from the inevitable camp scavengers – in this instance a yellow-billed kite and a pied crow – you’re completely alone. Even the buzz of an insect sounds unnaturally loud against a backdrop of absolute silence.

As dusk settles, I relax into a camp chair, only to spot a dark shape that is starting to slither down the trunk of a nearby tree. Snake! A no-name brand – but later I identify it as possibly a bark snake, and only mildly venomous.
Still, I’m not taking any chances, so I zip myself up tightly into my tent at bedtime. In the middle of the night, I wake to hear the sound of rain drumming on the roof – the tail end of the storm has arrived.

The road that heads due west out of the camp at Njuca Hills is large enough to land an aircraft on – more like a firebreak than a road – and it’s the route we choose to follow in the morning.
Every few hundred metres, a male northern black korhaan takes off with a clattering cry. James calls them “helicopter birds”.

Steenbok stake their claims with evenly spaced piles of droppings, and when we stop the car we can hear the flapper larks clapping their wings.
Clusters of zebra and gemsbok are scattered over a wide area. We turn left down another cutline, pausing to watch a jackal with its nose to the ground looking for something to eat, maybe the eggs of all those noisy korhaans.

A large pan interrupts our progress. There’s water on the far side. Wet pans are a driving no-no; you can get seriously stuck and there’s no one around to tow you out, so this is as far as we can go.
While James photographs the spoor of an ostrich family that has just crossed, I take off my sandals and walk onto the pan to test its muddiness. My feet sink into the whitish clay and instantly I feel the soothing effect on my itchy bites. That’s why the elephants love this stuff so much.

Late in the afternoon we head east from Njuca Hills towards a stand of palm trees that float, mirage-like, on the horizon. Our route takes us 12 km along the main road to a crossroads where you can turn right down an unmarked road that meanders between grassland, pans and the palm “islands”.

Unlike the sandy roads to the west, around Njuca Hills the roads are mostly firm jeep tracks. In dry weather, I figure any old farm bakkie would cope with this.
James has the look of a homecoming about him. He once worked at Jack’s Camp, east of here. “You forget how much you like a place when you don’t go there often,” he says.

The setting sun starts to colour a few clouds on the horizon a golden pink and turns the palms in the foreground into charcoal silhouettes.

Back at Njuca, an enormous praying mantis hunts around the light, and a scopsowl arrives to join in. It sits on a nearby branch eating its insect dinner while we tuck into our steak and potatoes.

Darkness is falling and it looks as if we’ll be the only campers at Khumaga campsite in Makgadikgadi.

Then a Hilux bakkie pulls in. Two women get out and climb into the back of the bakkie, leaving the tailgate open.
They sit there for a very long time as the jackals start yip-yowling in the distance. Later, they come over with a torch to introduce themselves.

Monika Pregler and Heidi Mueller are from Germany, on a self-drive holiday, and have previously done trips to South Africa and Namibia. But Botswana is proving to be a little wilder than they anticipated.

“I grew up on a farm,” Heidi says, “but this is the first time I’m driving on roads like these.”
Monika adds: “We saw some elephants on the way. What should we do when they’re in the road?”
Photographer James Gifford, who lives in Maun, reassures them: Don’t stress about the roads. They’re sandy but firm. And as for the elephants, well, just give them some space… 

To see the Makgadikgadi photo gallery, click here