Kgalagadi Self-Drive Safari

Overview

This is the great desert self-drive — the most photogenic in Africa — planned and supported end to end. Over five nights you drive the graded-gravel riverbed roads of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, between towering red dunes and along the dry Auob and Nossob riverbeds where the famous black-maned Kalahari lions, cheetah and huge herds of oryx and springbok concentrate. You base in SANParks rest camps and one tiny unfenced wilderness camp deep in the dunes, driving at dawn and dusk when the cats are on the move. The South African side is refreshingly accessible — a normal high-clearance car copes — and we win the near-impossible camp bookings for you.

You stay at Twee Rivieren, the comfortable entrance camp; Mata Mata on the Auob riverbed at the Namibian border; and Nossob, deep on the classic lion road — plus a coveted night at an unfenced wilderness camp such as Urikaruus or Kieliekrankie, solar-lit cabins on stilts overlooking a waterhole, where the wild is all around and the night skies are extraordinary. These wilderness camps sell out the instant they release, usually a year ahead, which is exactly why we book them the moment the window opens. The Kgalagadi delivers more drama per kilometre — red sand, blue sky and magnificent predators — than anywhere on the continent.