Makgadikgadi / Nxai Pans National Park

The Makgadikgadi and Nxai Pans form one of Botswana’s most striking landscapes, a vast expanse of ancient salt pans, grasslands, acacia woodland and open desert shaped by the remains of a prehistoric super-lake. The sheer scale and stillness of the landscape create an extraordinary sense of space.

During the rains, the dry plains are transformed as fresh grass draws large herds of zebra and wildebeest, followed by predators including lions, cheetahs, wild dogs and brown hyenas. Giraffes, elephants, springbok, gemsbok, eland and other antelope can also be found across the wider landscape.

The pans become particularly dramatic when seasonal rains fill their depressions, attracting thousands of flamingos and other waterbirds. At Nxai Pan, the rains also bring the famous zebra migration, while the landscape around Baines’ Baobabs offers one of Botswana’s most evocative scenes of ancient trees rising from the open wilderness.

Whether covered in fresh green grass after the rains or stretching dry and white beneath an endless sky, Makgadikgadi and Nxai Pans reveal a quieter, more elemental side of Botswana. It is a landscape defined not only by wildlife, but by its extraordinary scale, silence and ever-changing relationship with water.