Vast emptiness

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve is huge, four times the size of the Serengeti, yet it only experiences a trickle of visitors. This place really does feel almost infinite.

          A fossilised land

These apparently featureless plains are, in fact, a network of ancient fossilised dune ridges and underlying river valleys, long since dried out.

          Literary connections

If you have read the fabulous book “Cry of the Kalahari”, then you may find yourself overcome with a powerful urge to visit the renowned Deception Valley.

          Summer rains    

When a rare summer rain shower falls during Nov-Feb, a single valley can burst into bloom, causing a major clustering of wildlife and creating a scene reminiscent of the Garden of Eden.

           The long dry season

The animals here are serious survival specialists. For example, the giraffes endure the long harsh dry season by chomping on juicy Kalahari melons.

          San bushmen

The Kalahari is the spiritual home of the San people, an ancient tribe of hunter-gatherers, whose knowledge of their natural environment is unsurpassed.

            3 to 5 nights 

For shorter trips, it is more than possible to fly into Johannesburg and connect out to the Botswana  for as few as 3 or 5 nights, popular with guests who are visiting the region on business. Very few people would come to Botswana specifically to visit Central Kalahari, so it tends not to feature in short trips.

           6 to 12 nights  

Most of our guests tend to deploy 6 to 12 nights on safari in Botswana. At the shorter end, we are talking about a combination of two camps, usually in Okavango Delta and Linyanti Waterfront. At the longer end, we tend to combine three or four camps, usually adding a contrasting desert area like Makgadikgadi or Central Kalahari.

             13 to 28 nights 

For longer trips most people will start to combine with other countries. The most common extension is Cape Town, the Cape Winelands and the Whale Coast. Botswana can easily be preceded by Victoria Falls and combined with further safari in Zambia, Zimbabwe or the Kruger area of South Africa.

The cost of safari in Central Kalahari

Safari in Central Kalahari ranges from surprisingly reasonable to relatively pricey. During the Jul-Oct dry season it is the most expensive in Africa, whilst the Nov-Mar period can be genuinely great value. You can expect to spend USD 500 to 1600 per person per night.

We are more than happy to work across this range of prices. The only important thing is that we help you find the very best safari to suit your budget.

The two dominant price factors are the length of time that you spend on safari and the specific lodges that you choose to include in your trip. Deploying more time in town, rural and beach locations can bring the total cost down dramatically.

If you have a higher budget, we will help you determine which camps do actually deliver elevated levels of service and experience. We will also highlight other subtle ways in which your trip can be elevated to another level, including the use of whole camp bookings, private guides and vehicles, helicopter explorations of remote areas etc.

If you have a medium budget, the best ways to keep a lid on costs are to travel out of high season and to carefully choose lower cost lodges.  You can also reduce the number of core safari nights and deploy time in lower cost beach, town and rural locations. We will help you understand where to trim and where to splash in order to achieve the best overall experience.

If you have a lower budget, then talk to us about last minute booking options, which can deliver some extraordinary discounts. Failing that, we can always look at other fundamentally less pricey safari areas.

Okavango Delta

Located to the northwest of Makgadikgadi, the Okavango Delta is a stunningly good safari area, an iconic location which forms the centrepiece of most safaris to Botswana. 

Linyanti Waterfront 

Located to the north of Okavango, the Linyanti Waterfront is another superb safari area, renowned for big herds of elephants and buffaloes, plus prodigious predator action.

Victoria Falls

A few days at the Victoria Falls can work really well at the front end of a Botswana safari, there’s some lovely lodges, the falls are impressive and there’s loads of other interesting activities in the area.

The best safari lodges in Africa

The Central Kalahari has only a handful of lodges. We are able to include any of these properties in your trip.

The most prominent option is Tau Pan Camp, which is situated in a very remote spot deep inside the reserve and is the best place to get a real feel for the area.

The other properties are located outside the northern border of the reserve. This is something of an aesthetic disadvantage, but does bring the practical advantages of being able to provide walking safari and off-road driving.

You can always expect absolute honesty from us when describing the various lodges and camps. Our primary motivation is to figure out which ones will suit you the best.

Luxury trips

Our luxury trips to Botswana combine lodges which are in prime locations, where high levels of comfort and service are guaranteed. This does not necessarily mean infinity pools and spa facilities, but it does always mean that you will be hosted and guided by the very best people in the country. That is how to truly guarantee the quality of a safari.  

Adventure trips

In our adventure trips to Botswana, we use a much wider range of lodges, still in fabulous locations and offering authentic safari experiences, but often at considerably lower cost. More strenuous activities, like walking safari, are likely to feature more prominently. These cool, sometimes edgy lodges tend to be best suited to guests who are a little more outdoorsy and forgiving.   

When to go to Central Kalahari

The safari areas of Central Kalahari are very seasonal. Extremely detailed knowledge of the ecosystems and wildlife movements around every single camp is needed to properly plan a great safari. When thinking about seasonality it is important to consider the four aspects of weather, wildlife movements, visitor traffic and prices.

May-Nov : Dry season

During the May-Nov dry season this is a parched land and safari is all about witnessing the struggle for survival in an arid semi-desert, with widely dispersed populations of desert specialists such as springboks, kudus, meerkats, pangolins and aardvarks, plus the renowned brown hyenas and huge black-mane lions.

During May-Jun temperatures can drop towards freezing during the night, but this has little adverse effect on safari, the days are gorgeous and there are virtually no insects around.

During Oct-Nov temperatures and humidities can rise to uncomfortable levels, in advance of the rains. This can be much more of an issue, given that most camps do not have air-conditioning.

Visitor number are generally low, but you may encounter a few other vehicles around Deception Valley during Jul-Sep.


Dec-Apr : Green season

During the Dec-Apr green season, summer rain showers can cause very impressive clustering of migratory wildlife in remote hidden valleys.

The area contains a network of fossilized river beds which, despite being largely dry for hundreds if not thousands of years, still contain the richest soils. When a shower of rain falls, it brings forth a shock of nutritious grass, far preferable to the usual dry grazing.

Through this season the herbivores chase the showers, coming together to form intense gatherings of wildlife, grazing together and having their young. It's like a scene from the Garden of Eden, a fleeting bloom of life which bursts forth in an empty desert and then quickly fades. Naturally this also attracts large concentrations of predators, including cheetahs, leopards, spotted hyenas and aardwolves.

It's the prospect of encountering one of these elusive events that lures experienced and knowledgeable safari people here during the green season.

It is the Dec-Feb period which carries the greatest chance of more prolonged cloud and rain, although being the Kalahari Desert, the prevailing conditions remain relatively dry and sunny.

Visitor numbers are very low through this period, with the slight exception of the Dec-Jan holiday season.

Expert

Our safari experts are uncommonly knowledgeable and experienced

765,000

The number of superb safaris we have  so far created

Seamless

Arranging your trip should be almost as much fun as actually going on safari  

Value

Your trip should cost you no more than if you booked all the components directly

Tailored

Your trip will be perfectly tuned to meet your requirements

What our guests say

“We’ve used many different travel organizers and agents, but one truly stands like a giraffe, head and shoulders above all others.”

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“ATR are the experts in their field and I wouldn’t trust anyone else.”

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“ATR are honest in their appraisal of individual lodges. You can trust their judgement.”

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1999

The year that we started to build great safaris

           Sparse wildlife

In a desert area such as this, the wildlife is naturally thin on the ground. Experienced safari travellers will appreciate the subtle and unusual nature of the place, but others may find themselves disappointed by the lack of action.

           Regulations

Safari in Central Kalahari is significantly diminished by the fact that the park authorities do not permit off-road driving and walking safari. Staying outside the reserve can sidestep these issues.

           Makgadikgadi

Few people have the time to include two Kalahari areas in their trip and, it has to be said, the Makgadikgadi area offers a greater diversity of activities and a wider range of places to stay.