Shakawe, 375 km from Maun
After spending the night at Audi Camp in Maun, I set off early the next morning to Shakawe – a town at the top of the Panhandle, right next to the Namibian border.
The A3 tar road is in good condition but I often have to share it with donkeys and goats, so I drive slowly.
I can’t help thinking about Precious Ramotswe as I drive along – the heroine from Alexander McCall Smith’s “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series. When Precious is faced with a moral conundrum or a difficult case, she takes a long drive in her tiny white van to clear her head, under a cloudless sky that is such a pale blue it’s almost white. Like Mma Ramotswe, my thoughts begin to smooth out as the Kalahari scrolls away into the distance, rippling in the heat under that white-blue Botswana sky.
At Sehithwa I turn right onto the A35. This road runs all the way up the western side of the Okavango Delta, but the landscape is so flat that you never actually see it. You’d never guess that you were driving past the world’s biggest inland delta. The 15000 km² of floodwater is just a rumour on the breeze.
Four hours later, I finally reach Shakawe. Although it’s a big dot on the map, it’s small compared with Maun. There’s a Choppies supermarket where you can stock up on essentials; a Barclays bank; and a few kilometres to the south of the town a crocodile farm, called Krokovango. Here there are thousands of crocodiles, from babies to two monsters, Sam and Amos, who would each fill the flatbed of a Hilux. You can go on a tour for P22 (R27,50).
I fill up with petrol in Shakawe and backtrack 11 km to Shakawe Fishing Lodge, where I plan to camp for the night. A short dirt road leads to reception, and as I climb out of the car I get my first glimpse of the Okavango River: dark, cool and flowing swiftly. 
Giant hardwoods stand sentinel on the bank and a fish eagle calls from somewhere downstream. Such a profusion of water in this sunbaked landscape is miraculous. I stand gaping at the river until a staff member taps me on the shoulder and points me in the direction of the campsite.
One of the other campers comes strolling over as I set up my tent.
“Have you seen our local croc yet?” asks Graham Osbourne as he shakes my hand.
“Local what?” I reply, not sure if I heard correctly.
“Croc. A big bugger. He was basking in the sun on the bank over there.” Graham points to a spot about 5 m from my half-erected tent. “But don’t worry, I think he’s pushed off now.”
Camping with crocodiles. This is very distressing news. I drag my tent a good few paces back from the river.
“The hippos were here last night too, snorting and stomping around,” Graham says with a wry grin. I pull my tent back even further and put a big tree between it and the river.
Graham and his wife Beryl are retired and live in Underberg. They’ve joined their friends Bill and Lydia Bailey from Richard’s Bay on a long trip through Namibia and Botswana. Beryl and Lydia are keen birders and one of their goals in Shakawe is to tick off the big one: the secretive Pel’s fishing owl.
So later, just after sunset, we get into a boat and set off in search of this elusive bird. There’s a local breeding pair in the area and Lydia asks our skipper, Jardus von Loggernburg about our chances of actually seeing one.
“Oh, about 95%,” he says, as if he were talking about a hadeda.
We putter along next to the bank. The stars are out now and the water is so still that their pinprick lights are reflected all around us. Jardus shines his spotlight into the canopies of gigantic old trees – African ebony, marula and waterberry – but after 20 minutes of searching there’s still no tick in Lydia’s bird book.
“I might just have to eat my words,” Jardus mutters.
Suddenly something catches his eye and he kills the engine. He puts his finger to his lips and points with his spotlight. There, from behind a clump of leaves, two inky black eyes stare back at us. The owl’s oversized talons are clasped around a branch and its tawny wings are folded tentatively, ready to unfurl and take flight. A real, live Pel’s fishing owl in the wild… It’s a sight I’ll never forget.

Seronga, 110km from Shakawe
A little more than 10 kilometres north of Shakawe is the Mohembo border post and, beyond that, Namibia’s Caprivi Strip. That’s the direction I’m heading today, but I’m not going to Namibia; I’m going to cross the Okavango River on the Mohembo ferry and drive the long dirt road down to Umvuvu Camp, near Seronga, at the far south-east of the Panhandle, where the Okavango River branches into myriad channels, streams and swamps.
I’ve heard all sorts of horror stories about the ferry and the road to Seronga. You’ll wait for hours, people have told me. Two-wheel drive? Forget about it. I’ve given myself the whole day to get there and I’m hoping for the best.
When I arrive at the ferry crossing I’m second in the queue and the ferry itself is nowhere to be seen. Ha! This will be at least an hour’s wait. I lean on the bonnet, pull out a naartjie and start peeling it. But before I’ve even managed to eat a wedge, the ferry pulls in. Less than 10 minutes later I’m on the other side of the river.
“How much?” I ask the captain, juggling my half-peeled naartjie and my wallet. 
He laughs and shakes his head. “It’s free, Rra. Drive safely.”
What a country.
The next surprise is the road to Seronga. It’s an absolute pleasure to drive. It’s been properly graded and I cruise along at a good pace, occasionally slowing down for donkey carts and cattle, or stopping to pick up villagers with their thumbs in the air. All the hitchhikers I meet speak excellent English and I notice that the bigger villages have brand-new schools with face-brick buildings and solar power.
Tshiamo Kangera, a teacher from Eretsha, is busy telling me a fascinating story about the honey-guide, “the cleverest bird”, when we arrive in Seronga. It’s taken just over an hour to drive the 97 km that are apparently impossible in a two-wheel-drive car. I barely noticed the time passing.
“The turn-off to Umvuvu Camp is a little bit further,” Tshiamo says. “You can drop me there. Dankie, Rra.”
No one told me that Umvuvu Camp was on an island. After bouncing along a dirt track for two-and-a-bit kilometres, with ominous piles of elephant dung everywhere, my path is suddenly cut off by water. I bounce back to cellphone reception and call Mark Harbour at the camp. 
“Oh yeah, sorry about that,” he says. “Drive back to the river and I’ll come and fetch you.” 
True to his word, there’s an aluminium motorboat waiting for me when I get there, with a suntanned Englishman at the helm. Mark has lived in Botswana for more than 20 years, and his British accent rises and falls with a slight Setswana cadence.
Umvuvu is a bush camp in the finest sense of the word. It’s got everything you need – a campsite, bar, hot showers, communal cooking area and simple bedded safari tents if you’re tired of pitching your own tent – but there’s not a scrap of extra luxury and you have to be totally self-sufficient when it comes to food.
Mark’s main clientele are adventurous overland tour groups, but the next group is only arriving in two days’ time so I have the pick of the safari tents. I choose one next to an anthill underneath a shady marula tree, and nibble on some Salticrax while I wait for bush guide Lovemore Setshego to come and fetch me for an afternoon walk around the island.
Lovemore doesn’t carry a gun, but his senses are electric and he stops often to read the trees and the ground.
“This is wild sage,” he says, plucking some leaves from a bush. “Ah, it smells nice,” I say, rubbing the leaves between my fingers.
“Nice? You are the first person to tell me this! It is a terrible smell. We use it for mosquito repellent.”
I drop the leaves and casually wipe my hand on my shorts…
We see hippos in the distance during our walk, but no elephants. Lovemore shows me where the hippos sleep, just behind the camp. 
“This is a four-bedroom house,” he says, as we walk around the huge, sandy bunker. “You must watch for them when you brush your teeth tonight.”
Later that night, I brush my teeth in record time and dash back to the tent by the feeble light of my headlamp. I don’t see any hippos but I hear them snorting, grunting and cropping grass long into the night.

“Here around Seronga you just get elephants, hippos and crocodiles – small stuff,” Lovemore says with a wink. Then he points towards the south, where there’s nothing but water lilies, papyrus and gnarled old trees as far as the eye can see.
“But if you go that way on a mokoro for the whole day then you’ll see all the animals: buffalo, lion, leopard, everything.”
Today Lovemore is taking me on a mokoro day trip into the delta. Traditionally, mokoros are carved from tree trunks, but these days the boats are made of fibreglass, which has saved a lot of the delta’s ancient hardwoods.
The birdlife at water level is prolific – I’ve already spotted a goliath heron, African and lesser jacana, pygmy geese and fish eagles galore.
We also startled a hippo, and moments ago a huge Nile crocodile slithered across our path.  
Lovemore is standing at the back, poling us along expertly, but I’m sitting a centimetre above the water, so the papyrus and hippo grass is at head height. Every time we glide through a narrow gap, tiny green frogs and pale spiders with spindly legs rain down on me. I’m busy trying to return a frog to its natural habitat when Lovemore stops poling and allows the boat to drift. “Elephants,” he whispers. “There, on the bank.” 
It’s a small herd and they carry on munching, oblivious of the mokoro hiding in the reeds. It’s one thing to see an elephant from a car, and another to see one on foot, but to see a herd from water level… in the Okavango Delta… It’s a real privilege.
Now my senses are on high alert. A few minutes later there’s a raucous cry that sounds like a cross between a squeal and a bellow.
“What’s that?” I whisper. “That one!” Lovemore hisses back. “You’re very lucky to hear it… It’s a Seronga donkey!”
I sit red-faced in the front of the mokoro and go back to rescuing frogs.

Tsodilo hills 183 km from Seronga
The two hitchhikers in the back of my car haven’t said a word since I picked them up at the turn-off to Tsodilo Hills, just past Nxamasere.
Thuto Botsile and John Modise wear the star badges of the Zion Christian Church and their luggage takes up half the back seat: bulging backpacks and shopping packets filled with camping gear and food.
I was hesitant to take this detour to Tsodilo Hills because of the stories I’d heard about the road. Like the Seronga road, I’d heard about how vehicles have been mired in sand and how low range is essential. But so far the going has been good. The road is actually in better condition than most South African dirt roads.
I’m back on the other side of the river today and driving away from the Delta. The landscape is parched, totally flat except for three purple lumps on the horizon.
 As we get closer, the lumps grow and grow until they dominate the view: steep, barren hills that rear from the Kalahari scrubland.
Thuto suddenly discovers his voice. “You ask why we are coming here?” he says softly. “We have come to pray. We are from Maun but our lives are destroyed. We have nothing. Tsodilo is not only a special place for the Bushmen; these are the mountains of God. We will camp for 10 days and ask God to help us.”
There’s no doubt about it: Tsodilo is a spiritual place. There are more than 5 000 rock paintings spread over the three hills, called Male, Female and Child.
Archaeologists recently discovered a cave with a rock carved into the shape of a python that may be the oldest ritual site in the world, predating anything in Europe by 30 000 years.
If you have some serious praying to do, this is the place to do it. I drop Thuto and John at the museum in the shadow of Female Hill. We all sign the register, and they shoulder their packs and start walking, turning to wave as they go. They’re good guys; I hope things work out for them.

There are lots of rock art trails at Tsodilo. I decide on the most popular one, the Rhino Trail, which takes about two hours and circles half of Female Hill. I enlist the help of local guide Xhao Xuntae and we set off for the most famous rock art site in the hills: the Van der Post Panel.
It’s named after Laurens van der Post, who visited the hills in 1958 and wrote about them in The Lost World of the Kalahari. Van der Post’s travel party ignored the advice of their Bushman guide and hunted in the vicinity of the hills. Afterwards their cameras repeatedly jammed, their tape recorders refused to work and they were attacked by swarms of bees. Only after they made a written apology to the offended spirits did everything return to normal. 
The Van der Post Panel has one of the most striking ochre paintings of an eland in existence. It’s magnificent and seems to glow from some primordial place deep inside the rock. There’s also a perfect giraffe, a few more eland and some handprints. You can see the panel from ground level, but to get the best view you need to scramble up the cliff.
I pause at the top to catch my breath. The Kalahari seems to stretch into infinity. There’s not a pylon or telephone pole in sight. This view hasn’t changed much in the centuries since that eland was painted… a shiver runs through my body.
In these hills – place of refuge and worship for thousands and thousands of years – the spirit world is very close indeed.
We scramble down the cliff and continue the walk. Xuntae shows me a cave where excavations have revealed Stone Age implements. He also shows me a faded rock painting of a penguin, and another of a whale.
Whales and penguins? In the Kalahari? “We are storytellers,” Xuntae says. “My grandfather and his grandfather heard stories about the sea at Namibia. Maybe they even saw that sea themselves. These paintings are their stories.”
After we finish the trail, I give Xuntae a lift to the gate, about 3 km from the museum. In the 1970s, his village on Female Hill was moved far off onto the plain when the National Museum took charge of Tsodilo. Now it takes him two hours to walk to work in the mornings and two hours to walk back.
As I pitch my tent, alone in the campsite with a warm wind blowing and a dog howling somewhere, I suddenly feel despondent. For all its vast cultural treasures, Tsodilo Hills has a mournful air about it.
Maybe someone in Gaborone should draft an apology letter to those spirits.

Guma Lagoon, 107 km from Tsodilo Hills
My final stop on my way back to Maun is Guma Lagoon, and for the first time I’m forced to abandon the trusty X-Trail I’ve been driving and transfer my gear to a 4x4 Land Cruiser that has come to collect me in Etsha 13.
Guma Lagoon is right at the bottom of the Panhandle, almost directly across the river from Seronga. There’s a tar road all the way to Etsha 13, and Guma Lagoon is only 10 km further, but those last 10 km are mostly underwater.
Hence the need for a serious vehicle and a skilled driver like Mpho Boeng from Guma Lagoon Camp.
We grind through the swamp, water almost up to the doors, and chug through thick, sandy sections. 
“The South African guys love this road,” Mpho says. “It’s a challenge for them. They come with off-road trailers and 4x4s. They even like getting stuck and pulling themselves out. One guy said it was the best part of his holiday.”
Guma Lagoon Camp is a real find. Perched on the edge of a vast body of water, an offshoot from the main stream of the Okavango River, it has a number of shady campsites with individual ablution facilities as well as permanent safari tents. The focal point of the camp is where I plan to spend most of my time: a big deck hanging over the water, with comfortable chairs and a view right across the lagoon.
Camp manager Marc de Jager comes to find me on the deck late in the afternoon. “Keen to try for a baby tiger fish?” he asks. 
We idle out into the lagoon and Marc passes me a rod. “June isn’t the best time of year for fishing, but we’ll try our best,” he says. “Our busy period is during the barbell run at the end of the dry season, around October.”
“Barbel run?”
“It’s madness,” Marc says, getting excited. “As the water recedes, all the fry – the fish hatchlings – make their way back to the main channel. Huge barbell follow the fry and tiger fish follow the barbel, sometimes taking bites out of them. Last year, a guy caught 125 tiger fish in one day!”
I’m not as lucky. On my seventh cast a baby tiger fish bites, breaches, but flies off the hook. Marc, with all his experience, fares a bit better. He pulls up a small nembwe, or olive bream, as well as a baby tiger fish that gnashes its teeth and looks at us angrily.
He plops both back into the water – all the fishing at Guma Lagoon is catch-and-release.
We cruise back to camp at sunset, the mirror-still lagoon streaked red. Night birds are calling in the dusk.
A one-off visit to the Panhandle isn’t enough. I know I’ll come back one day: for the barbel run, for the rock art at Tsodilo, and to trail my fingers through the tea-coloured water from a mokoro…
“It’s a special place,” Marc says, reading my thoughts. “I hope it stays like this for a very long time.” 

Fuel. There are reliable fuel stations in Maun, Sehithwa, Gumare, Etsha 6 and Shakawe.
Foot-and-mouth disease. There are two control points for foot-and-mouth disease on the A35, one just north of Sehithwa and one just south of Sepupa. You’re not allowed to pass through, in either direction, with uncooked red meat, lamb, bacon or fresh milk. Chicken, fish and processed or smoked meat are allowed. Bear this in mind when you’re stocking your camp kitchen.
Malaria. Northern Botswana is a malarial area, so take the necessary precautions.
Money. During our visit the exchange rate was R1,25 to P1. You can change money in Maun at the airport or in town. Credit cards are accepted at some lodges and campsites, but it’s best to carry cash.

The Okavango Delta is flat – so flat that the height variation across the 150 km at its widest point is only 2 m! The only way to properly appreciate the immensity of the wetland is to see it from the air. It’s expensive, but worth it.
There are lots of charter companies in Maun that offer scenic flights in three-seat or five-seater planes. They charge per plane, not per person, so it’s more expensive if you’re a couple or on your own, unless you can join up with another group to bring down the cost.
When go! visited, Kavango Air was the cheapest.
Cost: P2000 (about R2500) for an hour-long flight in a five-seater plane – so P400 per person (about R500). There’s also a “departure tax” of P50 per person.
Contact: Kavango Air 00 267 686 0323; www.kavangoair.com
 

Maun
Audi Camp
The campsite is neat and the semi-outdoor showers are a treat. The bedded tents are also reasonably priced. The bar gets lively in the evenings and the hamburgers (P50) are delicious.
Camping: P35 per adult for South African citizens, half-price for children under 12. Bedded tents: P240 double B&B; P195 single B&B.
00 267 686 0599; www.okavangocamp.com
go! says: Don’t forget your swimwear in summer; there’s a great pool near the restaurant.

Shakawe
Shakawe Fishing Lodge
Pitch your tent at the water’s edge and fall asleep to a soundtrack of hippos snorting. There aren’t many power points, so pack a long extension cord. Ablution facilities are old but functional.
Camping: P110 per person per night. Lodge: P400 per person sharing.
00 267 686 0822
go! says: The campsite is a twitcher’s delight.

Drotsky’s Cabins
Another option in the Shakawe area, Drotsky’s has a shady campsite with stands screened off from one another with wooden fences. Each stand has a power point. If you’re sick of camp food there’s also a (pricey) restaurant.
Camping: P110 per person per night. Chalets: P400 per person sharing.
0067 687 5035; drotskys@info.bw
go! says: There are lots of vervet monkeys at the campsite, so make sure your bananas are safely stashed.

Seronga
Umvuvu Camp
You can only get here by boat, but that’s what makes it so appealing. Stay in a simple safari tent or pitch your own tent. There’s no electricity (although you can charge your batteries at the bar) and you have to provide your own food. Go on a mokoro trip or take a guided walk around the island.
Camping: P66 per person per night. Bedded tents: P110 per person. Guided walk around the island: P50. A mokoro day trip: P400 (the boat can take two people).
00 267 725 74643
go! says: The orange cellphone network covers most of the Panhandle, including Seronga. Activate international roaming or buy a SIM card in Maun.

Mbiroba Camp
The camp is owned and run by the Okavango Polers’ Trust, a community-based organisation. There’s a basic campsite with no electricity, rondavels that sleep two and chalets that sleep five, as well as a restaurant for guests. It’s popular with big overland tour groups.
Camping: P70 per person per night. Rondavels: P252 per person B&B. Chalets: P352 per person B&B. A mokoro day trip costs P700 for two people.
00 267 657 6861; www.okavangodelta.co.bw
go! says: Mbiroba is on the mainland and you can drive there easily – good news if you have a rooftop tent.

Tsodilo Hills
Tsodilo Hills campsite
The main campsite is next to the museum, about 3 km from the gate. It’s very basic, with no electricity. Hot water is not guaranteed in the ablution block. You could just visit for the day, but it’s worth spending the night to watch the hills turn golden at sunset.
Camping is free (another incentive to spend an extra day). A guide will accompany you on one of the rock art trails for P50.
The Department of Tourism (Gaborone) 00 267 395 3024
go! says: There’s another campsite near the cave on the Rhino Trail that is only accessible by 4x4. There’s no ablution block but it’s perfect if you’re into total bush solitude…

Guma Lagoon
Guma Lagoon Camp
Lovely, grassy campsite; each stand with its own ablutions. There are also bedded safari tents, two of which have just been upgraded into canvas-walled chalets on stilts, with enclosed bathrooms. Excellent value.
Camping: P88 per person. Bedded tents: P605 per tent (sleeps two). Boat hire for fishing: P853 per day (max four people), excluding fuel (P8 per litre used). If you don’t have a 4x4, a transfer from Etsha 13 costs P90 per person one way.
00 267 687 4626; www.guma-lagoon.com
go! says: The best stand is the one on the edge of the lagoon, separate from the rest of the campsite.

Nguma Island Lodge
Bigger than Guma Lagoon Camp, with a lodge and separate campsite. Campers aren’t allowed into the lodge area. Nice campsite, but not right on the water and more expensive than Guma Lagoon Camp.
Camping: P99 per adult, P66 per child under 10. Bedded tents: P737 (sleeps two). Boat hire: P435 per hour (max six people), including fuel. Transfer from Etsha 13 costs P170 per person return, with a minimum charge of P680 for the vehicle.
00 267 687 4022; www.ngumalodge.com
Go! says: Restaurant meals are available, but you have to book ahead.

(Note: All prices accurate in September 2009)