Travel and Tourism in Botswana

Chobe National Park

If the Okavango Delta is the jewel in Botswana's wildlife crown, then Chobe National Park is the setting that makes the jewel shine. Established in 1968 as Botswana's first national park, Chobe covers approximately 11,700 square kilometers in the extreme north of the country, bounded to the north by the Chobe River, which forms the border with Namibia's Caprivi Strip. The park's western boundary is close to the Okavango system, and together the two areas form part of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, the world's largest transfrontier conservation area, covering an enormous swathe of wilderness across five countries.

The Chobe River is the defining feature and the greatest attraction of the park. This broad, permanent river, flowing east toward its confluence with the Zambezi at Kasane, supports concentrations of wildlife that are almost beyond belief. The elephant population associated with the Chobe River system is the densest in the world. During the dry season, when the Kalahari to the south dries out completely, enormous herds of elephants converge on the river, some estimates suggesting that up to 50,000 individual elephants may use the river system during the peak dry-season months. Watching this gathering from a boat on the river as the sun goes down is one of the signature experiences of African wildlife tourism: elephants of every size and age, from enormous bull elephants bearing tusks that sweep nearly to the ground, to tiny calves barely visible beneath their mothers' bellies, pushing and splashing and swimming across the channel, while sunset stains the sky orange and pink above them.

The boat safari on the Chobe River is, in many ways, the best way to experience the park. Moving silently on the water, you can approach animals with minimal disturbance and from angles that no land-based vehicle could achieve. Elephants bathing and swimming are magnificent from the boat, but the riverine experience extends far beyond elephants. Hippopotamus surface and submerge, their barrel shapes occasionally shooting impressive jets of water and dung in the territorial display that gives them their oddly comic reputation. Nile crocodiles, some of them monsters measuring more than five meters, bask on sand bars and slip into the water with reptilian speed. African skimmers work the surface of the river in long arcing flights, their lower mandibles dragging in the water to catch fish. Pied kingfishers hover and dive above the faster-flowing sections. Giant kingfishers, the largest kingfisher in Africa, sit in waterside trees watching the river with the intense focus of born hunters. Colorful carmine bee-eaters swarm in their thousands along the steep clay banks where they nest colonially, filling the air with their liquid calls. Goliath herons, standing nearly as tall as a man, wade in the shallows with dinosaurian patience.

The Savuti area, in the south-central portion of Chobe, is one of the most dramatic and remote corners of any African national park. Savuti is defined by the extraordinary Savuti Channel, an ancient waterway whose behavior has baffled hydrologists for generations, running with water for decades at a time, then drying completely for years, apparently responding to tectonic activity along the same fault system that created the Okavango. The channel filled again in recent decades, bringing hippos and crocodiles to an area that had been dry for years, but its future behavior is unpredictable.

What makes Savuti most famous among wildlife enthusiasts is its lion population. The lions of Savuti are among Africa's most impressive predators, larger and more heavily built than many other populations, and they have developed a habit that is extraordinary in the annals of predator behavior: they regularly hunt and kill adult elephants. While lions elsewhere might occasionally take very young calves or weak, old individuals, the Savuti lions have been documented on film and by scientists killing healthy adult elephants of both sexes, coordinating their attacks on animals that outweigh them by many times. This behavior, thought to have developed during periods when the Savuti Channel was dry and prey was scarce, has persisted and spread through the local pride culture, making Savuti's lions genuinely iconic.

The Linyanti Marshes, in the western section of Chobe National Park and the adjacent private concessions, are one of the best areas in Botswana for African wild dogs. The Linyanti system, fed by the Linyanti and Chobe rivers, creates an extensive area of wetland and surrounding woodland that supports high densities of prey and, consequently, of predators. Wild dog packs are reliably encountered here, and their behavior is as spectacular as anywhere in Africa. The marshes also support enormous concentrations of elephant and buffalo during the dry season, and lion and leopard are regularly sighted.

Kasane, the town at the eastern end of Chobe National Park and the traditional gateway to this area, has grown substantially in recent years from the small village it was a generation ago. It now has good hotels, restaurants, and tourist facilities, and its location at the confluence of the Chobe and Zambezi rivers, close to the borders of four countries, makes it a natural hub for regional tourism. The famous Four Corners, where Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Namibia all meet at a single point in the middle of the Zambezi River, is just minutes from Kasane, and the new Kazungula Bridge, which opened in 2021, has replaced the old pontoon ferry as the crossing point between Botswana and Zambia.

Victoria Falls, one of the world's great natural spectacles, is just 70 kilometers from Kasane, and most safari operators offer day trips from Chobe to the Falls and back. The falls, known in the local Kololo language as Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Smoke That Thunders, are shared between Zimbabwe and Zambia, and both sides offer extraordinary viewing opportunities. The Zimbabwe side has the broader panorama and the dramatic viewpoint called Danger Point, while the Zambia side has the famous Devil's Pool, a natural swimming hole on the lip of the falls where, during low water season, visitors can actually swim to within a meter of the edge and look down into the gorge. Helicopter flights over the falls, white water rafting on the Zambezi below the falls, and bungee jumping from the famous bridge that spans the gorge between Zimbabwe and Zambia are among the adventure activities that draw visitors to this extraordinary site.

Wildlife beyond elephants and lions in Chobe is enormously diverse. Sable antelope, with their spectacular swept-back curved horns and rich chestnut bodies, are among the park's most beautiful residents. Roan antelope, similar in build but with shorter horns and a grayer coat, are less common but reliably seen in certain areas. Tsessebe, among the fastest of African antelopes, their elongated faces giving them an oddly mournful expression, graze the open floodplains. Zebra move in large herds through the woodland and grassland. Giraffe browse the tops of tall acacia and mopane trees. The diversity of smaller species, including the full range of mongooses, genets, civets, honey badgers, and the nocturnal specialties that emerge on night drives, makes Chobe a genuinely comprehensive wildlife experience across the taxonomic range.