Luxury Without Lodges: Nxai Pan

by Dominic Chadbon, 19 June 2008

Alright, keep your hat on. This isn't a rant against lodges - I don't mind a few of them in the right place but once in a while it's nice to go somewhere where they aren't. And so, a question: Can you keep a secret?

Good. Well, don't tell anyone but in Botswana there is a beat-up old sand track on the main Maun-Nata road that leads north into apparently empty, thorny Kalahari scrub.

It's an innocuous-looking road, deeply scored with dusty ruts and chances are you won't see another soul on it - two-legged anyway.

But it's not long before the Kalahari begins to reveal its wildlife: a bolt of reddish-brown becomes a fleeing steenbok - a dainty antelope - and suddenly a herd of impossibly handsome gemsbok ghosted out of the shimmering haze ahead.

Heading deeper down the dead straight track the spoor on the road reveals the presence of a patrolling male lion, his enormous paw prints betraying the moment he broke into a run (hunting? fighting?) adding a new dimension to your visit.

"Oh yes, there are a lot of lions here," grins Brookes, our immensely affable guide, "they are very big in this part of Botswana."

I blamed the shiver that ran through me on the chilled east wind. We were being expertly driven into the Nxai Pan National Park - a little-known and even less-visited chunk of the Kalahari - to our bush camp: fence? Nope; electricity? Forget it; cellphone reception? You what?

I don't know about you but when I think 'camping' I think 'chiropractor' - after years of bad nights and burnt baked beans I've come to expect the worst. Imagine my surprise when we find an extravagantly laid dining table next to a roaring fire, and a smiling welcoming committee in full voice.

"Welcome to the Kalahari!" they sang and no sight was more welcoming than my spacious tent boasting a bed, table, lamp and separate long-drop toilet. The luxury - and attention to detail - didn't stop there: ice cold drinks, hot showers, good coffee and gourmet meals materialised out of thin air all the time we were there.

"I could get used to this," I thought as I eased my groaning stomach into bed, flinching only momentarily as my feet connected with the unannounced furry hot water bottle squirrelled away, under the covers.

Nxai rhymes with 'sky' of which there's plenty in this pancake-flat land. The aficionados will tell you the 'X' in Nxai denotes a Bushman click - give a little tut with the 'N' as if expressing mild irritation, but there's nothing irritating about this park: it's an exhilarating wildlife experience.

Tantalisingly spanning the northern wooded savannahs as well as the Kalahari thornveld, Nxai Pan - a grass-covered plain, studded with tree islands and surrounded by open woodland - is home to an eclectic range of animals.

Water-dependent elephants, zebras and impalas rub shoulders with arid area specialists like springboks, giraffes and gemsboks. And setting out at dawn under a salmon-pink sky we quickly found out why the grass-munchers seemed twitchy: Nxai Pan sports a handsome rogue's gallery of large and toothy predators.

We soon spotted lions - big, muscular females moving silently and with deadly intent through the short golden grass. No sooner had they melted into the thickets than the athletic form of a cheetah, and then another, slid across the pan scanning the horizon for something weak and defenceless.

Something fitting that description soon turned up - for the lions anyway. A distressed-looking female giraffe staring at a tangle of scrub gave the game away: the lions had caught her baby and were casually disembowelling it while black-backed jackals sniffed around the periphery. Later on a crazed-looking brown hyena lurched out of the bush in front of us and leopard spoor zig-zagged along the road to the waterhole.

But it wasn't all tooth and claw: besides the large herds of nervous antelope and battleship-grey jumbos, the birdlife is surprisingly good too: there are plenty of feathered heavyweights - ostrich, kori bustard and secretary bird - as well as the smaller stuff. I sat under a single acacia at camp and counted no less than 11 different species in the same tree - foraging in the canopy, catching flies or pecking in the sand for seeds.

It is however the solitude that is most striking. We spent three nights there and saw only a single other visitor. The silence is at times numbing - a blanketing fog of, well, nothing, save the occasional blood-curdling, sobbing contralto of a jackal.

It's an absolute gem of a park, mostly overlooked by safari operators, far from any lodge and certainly off the beaten track for self-drivers.

"And that's how we want to keep it!" exclaimed Brookes on our last night as we sipped South African red wine by the fire. "The fewer people who come here, the better the wilderness experience." And leaning back in my chair, looking up at a silent, painted night sky as my glass was tactfully refilled, I found it a sentiment hard to disagree with.

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