Lusso Travel Ltd, No. 1 Glasshouse - 1LG1,
Alderley Park, Alderley Edge, Cheshire, SK10 4TG
Home to the largest network of salt pans in the world, Makgadikgadi & Nxai Pan provide a stunningly desolate reminder of what was once a super-lake covering swathes of southern Africa.
A vast salt-encrusted landscape of savage beauty, covering an area of 5,500 square miles
Witness the second-largest migration of zebra and wildebeest in Africa (November to April)
Quad bike across the pans, sleep beneath the stars (April to October) and walk with the San Bushmen
Get up close to colonies of habituated meerkats, spot African wild dogs and see rare brown hyena
The Makgadikgadi Pans are the world’s largest salt pans and the most visible reminder of a vast super-lake formed more than five million years ago. For much of the year this is an arid land, baked and cracked by the sun. It’s one of the most stark and dramatic landscapes you’ll find in all Africa and a perfect canvas for quad bike safaris, sleeping out beneath the stars and getting up close and personal with habituated meerkats.
Yet during the wet season from November to April the pans fill up, fed by a slow underground seepage from the Okavango. Flamingos come to breed, painting the landscape a technicolour pink, and wildebeest and zebra appear in their thousands on the surrounding grasslands to feed on the lush new growth. Hippo and elephant gather at water holes, black-maned Kalahari lions stalk herds of resident antelope, and carmine bee-eaters add flashes of colour to a myriad budding plants.
Lying adjacent to the Makgadikgadi salt pans is Nxai Pan, a dusty grassland dotted with acacia trees and mopane woodland, famous for its huge springbok population, annual zebra migration and as home to rare species, including African wild dog and the elusive brown hyena.
One of Africa's most iconic camps, situated in the heart of the Makgadikgadi salt pans and steeped in 1940s campaign history.