Botswana

Botswana is, for many, the finest safari country in Africa — vast, wild, uncrowded, and built around one of the natural wonders of the world.

That wonder is the Okavango Delta, where a river dies into the Kalahari sand and spreads into a maze of channels, islands and lagoons — the largest inland delta on earth, and a paradise of big game in water and on land. You explore it by mokoro (dugout canoe), by boat and by vehicle, through exclusive concessions with no fences and few other people.

Beyond the Delta lie more wilderness than most countries can dream of: Chobe and its enormous elephant herds, the predator drama of Savuti and Linyanti, and the immense Kalahari of the Central Kalahari and the Makgadikgadi salt pans, with their zebra migration and meerkats. Botswana is also one of the best places on earth for the endangered African wild dog.

It runs a deliberate model: high cost, low volume. Small fly-in camps on huge private concessions keep visitor numbers down and the wilderness intact — which is exactly why a Botswana safari feels so wild and exclusive, and why it is not cheap.

The thing that makes a Botswana trip is the choice — the concession, the camp, the balance of water and land, and the timing of the Delta flood. Get those right and it is the wildest safari there is.