Know Before You Go: Botswana Safaris

There's an authentic experience when you are actually in a canvas tent and you go to sleep at night and can hear the sounds of the bush around you. You can hear a jackal calling in the distance or hippos coming out of the water. You sit around a fire under the stars at night and get to just be in this place. You really get a sense of place. And you get to just feel like you're just in this timeless moment in nature. You get a chance to lose your sense of self and lose your sense of time and really just be in that moment. We go deeper into the bush to get a more remote, more exclusive experience for our guests. So we go to private reserves where you're not surrounded by lots of other tourists. You can feel the vastness of the space around you. You just see nothing but wilderness. The access to wildlife and the exclusivity of the experience is unmatched. You're peacefully enjoying having no one else around in this environment that's very obviously exclusive just for you and your group. Our secluded small camps only have four or five guest tents. The footprint is smaller. The impact on the environment around you is smaller. It is such a core part of who we are at NAATHUB to be out in nature in small groups. It changes everything about the experience and makes it really touch people's hearts. It's a completely different way to be on safari and there's something really beautiful about that. You have a more intimate experience with the wildlife. There's a sense of mutual trust. It is much more than you expect it to be. At Hemsling Yanti camp is set right along a waterway just to the northeast of the Okavango Delta. We spend our days out on game drives looking for not only elephants but also lions, leopards, giraffes. So you really do get to see tons of wildlife. You have lots of action. There's this excitement that happens when you arrive to Lignanti because you can see all of our team there on the ground excited to see you and excited to meet you. They're there, they're ready for you and you can see this shimmering swimming pool and then there's a riverbed and all these trees and as you step off the vehicle into the camp you've got this open sensation with the bush all around you and beautiful woven baskets and little lamps and tables and everything just looks so cozy and welcoming. And you're stepping into the bush in this way that feels very welcome and warm and comfortable. Everywhere you arrive it feels like everyone's been waiting for you, which is like a nice special touch. You feel like you're coming home every time. So, Palos unique in that it's set in a part of the delta that has year round water. The word Palos means heart and the camp itself is set on a small island that actually from above is in the shape of a heart. So imagine you are on safari, you've been looking at elephants and lions and giraffes and driving around looking at things and all of a sudden you get out of the vehicle and hop into a boat, long grasses all around. You might see hippos in the water or a fish eagle flying by, you're hearing sounds you haven't heard before. So you're kind of zooming in and out of these channels and you come around a corner to find an island with tents set up on it and people standing there waiting to greet you. They've got, you know, maybe a welcome beverage and, like a cool washcloth for your face and you step into their little paradise and it's their home and it feels like you're the most welcome visitor, like you've arrived and they've been there all along. Suddenly you're in a place that's full of moisture and everything is green and lush. There's like a breath of fresh air that's happening, right? You get out of the safari vehicle and suddenly you're in a boat and the breezes are coming through and there's just a sense of like you're in a completely different ecosystem suddenly and it's refreshing. One of the cool things about Gamochi is you might just be having breakfast or dinner or walking through camp and you'll see an entire herd of elephants come to the waterhole and then a couple of hyenas and then maybe a giraffe. It's it's like a constant show of extraordinary wildlife. The last time I arrived at Kumasi camp as I stepped into that living space, there was a huge herd of elephants just drinking at the waterhole. We couldn't even say hello to every we were all so excited about the elephants that it completely dominates your experience, right? You're just there for that. The tents are really spacious and set on platforms, but they're canvas walls and high ceilings. They're built with this unique triple fly construction that allows for better ventilation. It's just really done and very authentic safari experience. And our camp is unique in that it's separated and we have our own space. We have like this feeling of exclusivity and seclusion. And at the same time we're giving back to this community and working with them to preserve the land and we have partners locally that work really closely with the Santovani community in order to allow us to be in this space and there's things that we do to support them their community and things that we need to abide by in order to continue to protect this land, such as the way we build these tents and the life footprint, the solar power, the way we use water. There's just a lot of symbiotic stuff going on that makes it feel good to be there. Truly what stands out about Botswana is this national ubiquitous sense of really appreciating the land, appreciating this extraordinary delta, this flood of water that comes in and the wildlife that it can sustain. It just creates this shared passion for protecting the land and protecting the wildlife.