Botswana safaris, the way we travel them ourselves

A tailor-made Botswana round trip starts with us at €3,465 per person excluding international flights, for seven days from the Okavango Delta to the Makgadikgadi pans. Exclusive fly-in safaris with camps in private concessions range between €13,450 and €17,300 per person. What moves the price is the camp category, the share of charter flights and the season: nights in the houses we work with start at around €540 and run to over €1,900 per person. Your personal proposal itemises every service transparently.

It depends on how much of your time you want to spend in a vehicle. On a fly-in safari, light aircraft cover the distances between camps – which opens up remote private concessions that are barely reachable by road, as in our Great Plains luxury fly-in safari. A guided overland safari costs considerably less and shows more of the landscape between the regions, at the price of longer stages on sand tracks – the way our route "Botswana – from the delta to the desert" is built. Self-driving we only recommend to experienced 4x4 travellers, and private concessions are generally closed to self-drivers in any case.

At least ten days. The regions lie far apart – several hours of driving or a charter flight separate the Okavango Delta, Chobe National Park and the Makgadikgadi pans – and with fewer than three nights per camp a region stays a stopover rather than an experience. With 14 days you can add the central Kalahari or a detour to the Victoria Falls. Shorter journeys from seven days work well if you deliberately concentrate on two regions.

For the high season between July and October we recommend enquiring 12 to 18 months ahead. The sought-after houses are tiny – Zarafa Camp in the Selinda Reserve has four tented suites, Meno a Kwena above the Boteti River ten Meru tents – and allocations in the private concessions go quickly. For the shoulder months of March, April and November far less lead time is needed. Do get in touch at short notice too: space does open up in well-booked camps.

Yes – just not as the cheapest way in. Botswana is politically stable, the camps operate at a very high standard, and the time difference is at most one hour, so you arrive without jet lag. Against that, prices sit well above Namibia or South Africa, and getting there means a stopover plus, usually, a charter flight into camp. If Botswana is to be your first African journey, we plan fewer moves and longer stays per camp. The route "Botswana – from the delta to the desert" links water and desert landscapes in seven days and works well as a first approach to the country.

Yes, with the right choice of camps. Not every house takes children, and some private concessions set minimum ages – which is why camp selection comes at the start of family planning, not the end. Meno a Kwena, for instance, keeps two family tents with connecting doors. For families we plan shorter stages, more time per camp and activities that also work for younger children; our route "Botswana's exclusive family safari" was designed for exactly that. Tell us how old your children are – camps, route and activities follow from there.