Chobe

Chobe is the river of the elephants: along its Botswana bank, in the north-east corner of the country where four nations meet at Kazungula, the largest elephant population on Earth — some fifty thousand in the region — comes down every dry-season evening to drink, bathe and swim to the grass of Sedudu island, and the boats that drift on the current at sunset among them, with the hippo, the buffalo and the crocodiles, are the most reliable hour of wildlife on the continent. The park behind the river is eleven thousand square kilometres and has three more faces: the Ngwezumba pans in the centre; the Linyanti marshes to the north-west, wilder and private; and Savuti in the south-west, whose channel flows for a decade and dries for a decade without warning, and whose lions and elephants — and its zebra, from December to March — are the stuff of a hundred documentaries, under hills painted by the San. Kasane is the town at the gate, with the airport, the lodges and the houseboats; Victoria Falls is eighty kilometres east; the Okavango is a long day south-west.

The traveller flies into Kasane, or comes over from Victoria Falls in an hour and a half, and sleeps on the river — in the town, at the one lodge inside the park, or on a houseboat —; takes the morning drive along the Serondela riverfront for the elephant, the sable, the puku and the lions when they are down, and the boat at four in the afternoon, which is the reason to be there: the herds arriving through the dust, the crossings to Sedudu, the sun going into Namibia; the second day, a walk to the Kazungula bridge for the four corners, or the day trip to the Falls; and, with the nights and the means, the long sand road or the flight to Savuti, for the channel, the marsh and the lions that made it famous, and a night camp under the Kalahari sky.

The Guide's honesty: the riverfront is easy and popular — the sunset boats can be many, and the smaller boat with the better guide costs more and is worth it —; Botswana's parks are priced high on purpose, and Savuti and Linyanti are the private-camp end of that scale; the roads inside the park are sand, and a 4×4 with a driver who knows the tracks is the way, not a hire car; malaria is real in the green season; and an elephant herd walking into the river at dusk with the calves in the middle, seen from ten metres away on the water, is one of the sights the Guide would send anyone to see, which is why this page sits high on the continent's shelf.