A Safari Like You've Never Seen

A rugged new breed of trips in Botswana takes animals out of the equation.

- Brandon Presser

About halfway into our journey, the caravan of quad bikes ground to an abrupt halt along the cracked and creviced salt pans of Botswana’s Makgadikgadi Basin. “This is why you’re here,” my guide, Super Sande, exclaimed, gesturing at the abject flatness of the Kalahari, a talc-white carpet sprouting not a single weed or thorn. He instructed our small group to each pick a direction and, forming a starburst pattern, count our steps out toward the various horizons.

Twenty steps. Fifty. A hundred. A thousand footprints etched into the sunbaked dust until I finally stopped, alone. In the extreme silence borne only in the heart of the desert, I dropped to my knees. In the colossal quiet, I could hear only my thoughts as I traced my finger over the ropes of dried mud and shards of shattered seashells and wondered if anyone else—in the history of our planet—had ever walked across the exact bit of land on which I had settled.

We were the first to try a product newly created by award-winning safari operator Natural Selection—a four-day trek across Botswana’s vast, uninhabited interior, connecting the islands of granite and thick-trunked trees that disrupt the miles of otherwise flat, lifeless terrain.

Roughly the size of France or Texas but with only 3 million inhabitants, Botswana is one of the least densely populated nations on Earth. It’s probably most famous for the flooding swamps of the Okavango Delta, which attracts hundreds of species of mammals and birds each year. With its government enacting a high-cost, low-volume approach to tourism, the country has positioned itself as a premium destination, and it’s a favorite among safari-goers seeking hordes of animals instead of crowds of tourists.