Makgadikgadi Pans

Makgadikgadi Pans Location: North Eastern Botswana
Climate: Dry season Apr-Oct, Wet season Nov-Apr. Can be extremely hot and pleasantly mild at night.
Typical Landscape: Flat salt pans as far as the eye can see, astonishing feeling of remoteness, surprising wildlife.

The Makgadikgadi Pans are large salt pans in the middle of the dry savanna of North Eastern Botswana. The Makgadikgadi Pan is one of the largest salt flats in the world, and is surrounded by the Kalahari Desert – it is technically not just a single pan, but many pans with sandy desert in between.  The pans cover 6,200 sq mi in the Kalahari basin and form the bed of the ancient Lake Makgadikgadi that started to evaporate many millennia ago.

This is one of the most starkly beautiful places on earth, with small wildlife surprises, in a baron land where one finds it hard to believe anything can survive. The Makgadikgadi Pan also hosts two of Botswana’s most unique and mesmerising camps, Jack’s Camp and San Camp.

After the rains the Pans become an important habitat for migrating animals such as wildebeest, zebra, predators and lots of birds such as ducks, geese, pelicans and flamingos.