Destinations - Bush Baby Calls

Okavango Delta

The world's greatest inland delta. A UNESCO World Heritage Site. And the heart of everything Bush Baby Calls does.

Into The Delta

The Okavango Delta is not a place you visit, it is a place that gets inside you. Fed by rains falling in the Angolan highlands, the floodwaters travel 1,000 kilometres before spreading across the Kalahari sands, creating one of Africa's most extraordinary ecosystems at the precise moment the surrounding landscape turns dry. It is a wilderness built on contrast: desert and water, silence and sound, stillness and sudden movement.

Bush Baby Calls has been operating in the Okavango Delta since 2012. MG knows these waterways, these channels, and these game trails the way most people know their own streets. When you are out on the mokoro at first light, sliding through papyrus reeds with an elephant browsing fifty metres away, you are not on a tour. You are being guided by someone who has done this thousands of times and still finds it extraordinary.

What to Expect

Mokoro excursions through lily-covered channels at sunrise
Game drives into remote areas inaccessible to larger operators
Guided bush walks where MG reads tracks, calls, and behaviour
Boat cruises along permanent channels at golden hour
Real single beds in camp - comfort without compromising the wild
Chef-prepared meals under an open sky

Best Time to Visit

May to October (dry season) for optimal game viewing. November to April (green season) for dramatic skies, fewer visitors, and exceptional birding.

Elephant, lion, leopard, hippo, crocodile, wild dog, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, red lechwe, sitatunga, and over 400 bird species.

The Okavango Delta is Bush Baby Calls' home territory. Every package that operates here is built on 13 years of intimate knowledge of this ecosystem.

Moremi Reserve

Africa's first community-established wildlife reserve. One of its greatest.

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Living Delta Wilderness

Moremi covers the eastern portion of the Okavango Delta and is widely regarded as one of the finest game reserves on the continent. Established in 1963 by the BaTawana people to protect their ancestral lands from uncontrolled hunting, it remains a remarkable testament to community-led conservation and an extraordinary place to be in the bush.

The landscape here shifts between permanent water channels, seasonal floodplains, dry woodland, and open grassland - creating habitats that support an exceptional concentration and diversity of wildlife. Chief's Island, at the heart of Moremi, is one of the most productive game viewing areas in Africa. Bush Baby Calls operates mobile camps throughout the reserve, placing guests exactly where the action is.

What to Expect

Game drives into Chief's Island and surrounding concession areas
Mokoro trips through Moremi's wetland fringes
Walking safaris with MG through mopane woodland and floodplain edges
Boat safaris along the reserve's permanent waterways
Photography opportunities in some of Africa's most dramatic light
Night drives for nocturnal species such as leopard, honey badger, civets

Best Time to Visit

June to October for peak game viewing. The dry season concentrates wildlife around water sources throughout the reserve.

African wild dogs (one of Africa's best populations), lion, leopard, cheetah, elephant, buffalo, hippo, crocodile, red lechwe, sable antelope, roan antelope, tsessebe, and exceptional birdlife.

Moremi is included across multiple Bush Baby Calls itineraries and is one of MG's most familiar operating areas.

Chobe National Park

Africa's greatest elephant population. A river to rival any on the continent.

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Where Giants Gather

Chobe National Park is home to the largest concentration of elephants on earth - estimates place the population at over 120,000 animals. For guests who have never seen a herd of five hundred elephants moving through riparian forest toward the river, the Chobe waterfront is an experience that resets every benchmark for what African wildlife can be.

Beyond the elephants, the Chobe River itself is the defining feature - a broad, permanent waterway that supports an extraordinary density of wildlife year-round. Bush Baby Calls operates river-based game viewing alongside traditional vehicle-based drives, giving guests access to both the floodplain and the riverine forest habitat that defines this corner of northern Botswana.

What to Expect

Elephant herds - numbers and intimacy that are impossible elsewhere
Boat-based game viewing on the Chobe River
Buffalo herds in thousands along the floodplain
Lion and leopard in riverine forest habitat
Exceptional birding including African fish eagle, Carmine bee-eater, and Pel's fishing owl
Spectacular sunsets over the Chobe River

Best Time to Visit

May to October for peak game viewing. July to September for the largest elephant concentrations on the riverfront.

Elephants (in extraordinary numbers), lion, leopard, buffalo, hippo, crocodile, sable antelope, roan antelope, puku, and over 450 bird species.

Chobe is typically combined with other northern Botswana destinations in Bush Baby Calls' longer multi-area itineraries.

Savuti

The marsh that disappeared and came back. A predator landscape like no other.

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Landscape of Extremes

Savuti is one of Africa's most dramatic safari destinations and one of its most unpredictable. The Savuti Channel - which feeds the famous Savuti Marsh - has a history of drying up and flowing again, and has shaped the entire ecosystem around it. When the marsh is full, it draws wildlife from across the region. When it retreats, what remains is a dry, ancient landscape haunted by lions and carved by thousands of years of elephant movement.

Bush Baby Calls operates mobile camps in and around Savuti as part of longer northern Botswana itineraries. This is a big predator country - lion prides here are known for taking on elephants, a behaviour documented and still witnessed by fortunate visitors. For guests wanting to understand the raw drama of African wildlife, Savuti delivers it without compromise.

What to Expect

Lion prides in territory known for elephant predation
Cheetah on the open Savuti floodplain
Elephant concentrations around permanent water in the dry season
Ancient San rock paintings at Gubatsa Hills
Vast, open landscape that feels like the edge of the world
Mobile camp flexibility to position exactly where wildlife is moving

Best Time to Visit

June to October. The dry season concentrates predators and prey around the remaining water sources.

Lion, leopard, cheetah, elephant, buffalo, wildebeest, zebra, giraffe, hyena, wild dog (seasonal), and large numbers of raptors.

Savuti features in Bush Baby Calls' longer northern Botswana itineraries and is not operated as a standalone short-stay destination.

Victoria Falls

One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. A day trip unlike any other.

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Smoke That Thunders

Victoria Falls, known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders, is one of those places that earns its reputation completely. At peak flow, over 500 million litres of water per minute plunge 108 metres into the Zambezi Gorge, generating a roar and spray cloud visible from 50 kilometres away. No photograph, no film, no description prepares you adequately for standing on the edge of it.

Bush Baby Calls offers Victoria Falls as a day tour in addition to safari itineraries, typically for guests travelling through the Kasane/Chobe area. It is not a safari destination - it is a natural wonder that sits at the end of a great journey, and for many guests, standing at the falls after days in the Okavango or Chobe is one of the most memorable moments of an extraordinary trip.

What to Expect

Viewing The Falls - one of Africa's most powerful experiences
The rainforest created by the spray - lush, vivid, and permanent
Views from the Zambia and Zimbabwe sides of the gorge
Sunrise visits before the crowds arrive
Guided walks through the rainforest with a local guide

Best Time to Visit

February to May for maximum water flow and drama. June to October for clearer views and the famous 'Devil's Pool' swim at low water (Zambia side).

Rock hyrax, vervet monkeys, and exceptional birdlife including Taita falcon and various kingfisher species in the gorge.

Victoria Falls is available as a day tour add-on to Bush Baby Calls itineraries that include Chobe National Park. It is not offered as a standalone safari destination.

Makgadikgadi Pans

The largest salt pans on earth. A landscape that redefines the word vast.

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Horizons Without End

The Makgadikgadi Pans are among the most extraordinary places on the African continent - and among the least understood by first-time visitors. What appears at first to be emptiness is in fact one of Africa's great seasonal ecosystems: a salt desert that transforms into a wildlife spectacle when the rains arrive, and a landscape of almost otherworldly beauty when they do not.

Standing on the edge of the pans in the dry season, the silence is absolute. The horizon is perfectly flat. The sky fills everything. In the green season, zebras and wildebeest arrive in their tens of thousands, followed by lions, cheetahs, and brown hyenas. Meerkats are habituated to human presence in several areas. And in years of good rain, flamingos arrive on the flooded pans in spectacular flocks. Bush Baby Calls includes the Makgadikgadi in its extended interior Botswana itineraries.

What to Expect

Standing on the salt pans - a perspective on scale and silence found nowhere else
Zebra and wildebeest migration in the green season
Meerkat encounters at habituated groups
Brown hyena - one of Africa's most elusive predators, more regularly seen here than anywhere
Flamingo flocks on flooded pans in good rain years
Stargazing on a surface that reflects the Milky Way

Best Time to Visit

November to April for the migration and meerkat activity. May to October for the stark, photographic beauty of the dry pans.

Zebra, wildebeest, springbok, gemsbok, brown hyena, cheetah, lion (seasonal), meerkat, bat-eared fox, and exceptional seasonal birdlife.

The Makgadikgadi is typically combined with Nxai Pans in Bush Baby Calls' longer central Botswana itineraries.

Khwai

A community concession bordering Moremi. Where the wildlife doesn't know where the reserve ends.

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Wildlife Without Boundaries

Khwai community - one of Botswana's most successful examples of community-based natural resource management. The concession offers something that the reserve itself cannot: greater flexibility in where camps are placed, the ability to conduct night drives, and an intimate, uncrowded wilderness experience just metres from Moremi's extraordinary game.

The Khwai River forms a natural corridor that draws wildlife in extraordinary numbers, particularly during the dry season. Elephant herds move through in the hundreds. Wild dog packs den here. Lions are regularly encountered on and off-road. And because the concession sees far fewer vehicles than the main reserve, encounters here have a quality that is increasingly rare in southern Africa.

What to Expect

Night drives - not available inside Moremi, a genuine advantage of the Khwai concession
Elephant herds crossing the Khwai River in the dry season
Wild dog denning activity - some of the best access in Botswana
Floodplain game drives at golden hour
Walking safaris in community concession areas
Flexible camp positioning to follow wildlife movement

Best Time to Visit

May to October. The dry season concentrates extraordinary numbers of wildlife along the Khwai River floodplain.

African wild dog, lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo, hippo, hyena, jackal, and exceptional floodplain birdlife.

Khwai is one of the highlights of Bush Baby Calls' longer itineraries - the night drive access alone sets it apart.

Nxai Pans

Ancient lake bed. Open sky. One of Africa's great seasonal wildlife spectacles.

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Ancient Salt Horizons

Nxai Pans is what remains of a vast prehistoric lake - a series of open, fossil pans fringed by acacia woodland and dominated by one of Africa's most iconic trees, the baobab. In the dry season, Nxai is stark and beautiful in its openness. In the green season, following the rains, it transforms into something extraordinary: vast herds of zebra and wildebeest move through, cheetah and lion hunt across the open floodplain, and the pans fill with water that reflects a sky which seems larger here than anywhere else.

The Baines' Baobabs - a cluster of ancient trees painted by the explorer Thomas Baines in 1862 and largely unchanged since - are one of Botswana's most striking natural landmarks. Bush Baby Calls includes Nxai Pans in itineraries that capture the seasonal dynamism of the Botswana interior.

What to Expect

Zebra and wildebeest migration (November to April)
Cheetah hunting on open pan floodplains - some of the best sightings in Botswana
Baines' Baobabs - ancient trees, remarkable light, extraordinary photography
Open landscape game drives with extraordinary visibility
Stargazing on the pans with virtually zero light pollution
Seasonal bird influx including flamingo, pelican, and migrant waders

Best Time to Visit

November to April for the zebra migration and green season wildlife spectacle. May to October for resident predators and clearer skies.

Cheetah, lion, brown hyena, springbok, gemsbok, zebra and wildebeest (seasonal migration), giraffe, and exceptional seasonal birdlife.

Nxai Pans is part of Bush Baby Calls' extended interior Botswana itineraries, often combined with Makgadikgadi.

Central Kalahari Game Reserve

The world's second largest game reserve. One of its last true wildernesses.

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Remote Untamed Expanse

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve covers 52,000 square kilometres of ancient desert - one of the largest protected areas on earth and one of the most remote. This is not easy safari territory. It is days of driving on sand tracks, nights under skies undimmed by any human light, and wildlife encounters that feel genuinely wild because the animals here have not learned to be comfortable with vehicles. That is its power, and its gift to the visitor who comes prepared for it.

The Central Kalahari is the ancestral homeland of the San people, whose relationship with this landscape stretches back tens of thousands of years. The black-maned Kalahari lion - larger and more dramatically manned than its counterparts elsewhere - roams here in prides that have never been habituated to tourism. Gemsbok, springbok, and wildebeest move across the desert in their thousands. And the silence here is unlike anything in Africa's more travelled wilderness areas.

What to Expect

Black-maned Kalahari lion - one of Africa's most sought-after wildlife sightings
Gemsbok, springbok, and wildebeest on open desert plains
San cultural heritage and connection to the landscape
Total isolation - this is genuine remote wilderness
Extraordinary night skies with zero light pollution
Photography conditions unlike anywhere in southern Africa

Best Time to Visit

March to May for green season wildlife concentration. June to September for dry season predator activity around remaining water sources.

Black-maned lion, leopard, cheetah, brown hyena, gemsbok, springbok, wildebeest, eland, bat-eared fox, aardwolf, and exceptional raptors.

The Central Kalahari features in Bush Baby Calls' extended southern itineraries for guests seeking genuine remote wilderness away from the more visited northern circuits.

Bush Baby CallsWilderness Destinations

Botswana adventures

Our Wild Places

The Wildlife waterway

Okavango Delta

Into The Delta

What to Expect

Best Time to Visit

Wildlife

A Note on This Destination

Community-Led Wilderness

Moremi Reserve

Living Delta Wilderness

What to Expect

Best Time to Visit

Wildlife

A Note on This Destination

Elephant Kingdom Unmatched

Chobe National Park

Where Giants Gather

What to Expect

Best Time to Visit

Wildlife

A Note on This Destination

Untamed Predator Territory

Savuti

Landscape of Extremes

What to Expect

Best Time to Visit

Wildlife

A Note on This Destination

Thundering Natural Wonder

Victoria Falls

Smoke That Thunders

What to Expect

Best Time to Visit

Wildlife

A Note on This Destination

Endless Salt Wilderness

Makgadikgadi Pans

Horizons Without End

What to Expect

Best Time to Visit

Wildlife

A Note on This Destination

Community Wild Frontier

Khwai

Wildlife Without Boundaries

What to Expect

Best Time to Visit

Wildlife

A Note on This Destination

Seasonal Open Plains

Nxai Pans

Ancient Salt Horizons

What to Expect

Best Time to Visit

Wildlife

A Note on This Destination

True Desert Wilderness

Central Kalahari Game Reserve

Remote Untamed Expanse

What to Expect

Best Time to Visit

Wildlife

A Note on This Destination

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Bush Baby Calls
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