Part of the beauty of solo travel is the spontaneity that comes with the absence of meaningful guardrails. At its best, the abandonment of inhibitions means true escapism; money becomes monopoly money, strangers become friends, the next stop is wherever you want it to be. Even at its worst – when logic gives way to travel-induced insanity – you pick up life lessons and stories worth telling (even if sheepishly), as I was reminded on a recent trip to Botswana.
Botswana is a vast, dry, and startlingly beautiful country. Although synonymous with the Okavango Delta – the world’s largest inland delta – up to 90% of Botswana is covered by the Kalahari Desert.
I arrived in Maun, the dusty safari gateway town, with no great ambition beyond seeing wildlife in Botswana’s ‘high cost, low impact’ model – fewer tourists, fewer jeeps.
Any visitor to Africa needs to be comfortable with things not going to plan – TIA (This is Africa) is the refrain – but my first day was going particularly smoothly. I’d been upgraded on the way in, my driver was waiting at the airport, and at the pub, made fast friends with a South African mining entrepreneur, and a British expat from Singapore.
But Africa has a way of cutting you down to size.
At some point in the night – lubricated by exceedingly cheap lagers – our South African friend offered us a lift. In Sydney, the response would be ‘No thanks mate, I’ll get an Uber’. Instead, here: ‘TIA, let’s go.’
My hotel was just across the Thamalakane River, but the nearest bridge was 15 minutes away. ‘No matter, we’ll take the shortcut’ said our driver, seated in a Great Wall ute bearing very little structural similarity to a Landcruiser. It wouldn’t be my first time in a car driving through flowing waters in Africa, so I didn’t protest.
In hindsight, I should have.
Halfway across the river, the ute got stuck. Water was rising rapidly. My passenger side door would not open because of the pressure. As the driver forced his door open, the river rushed in with enough force to clarify the situation very quickly. We scrambled out and waded to shore in chest-deep water in darkness, shoes filling with mud, dignity dissolving.
And this is where Botswana began handing out life lessons against my will.
Lesson one: You don’t need all the data
The corporate world loves complete datasets and 100-page slide decks before making decisions. But standing in a river in Botswana in the dead of the night, I was operating in what some might call a “limited data environment”.
Had I known, while still in the river, that it was home to hippos, crocodiles, and a history of recent fatal encounters, I may have made an even worse decision – such as climbing onto the vehicle and waiting there like a marinated entrée.
Lesson two: Credentials matter
We all know someone who speaks with the confidence of a subject matter expert but has the qualifications of a Facebook comments section. Most of the time, they’re harmless. Occasionally, they drive you into a river at night in a vehicle that has no business being there.
If someone suggests a “shortcut” through moving water, a little due diligence helps. Questions like ‘Have you done this before?’ and ‘Could we die if you get it wrong?’
Lesson three: Be goal-oriented
Wading through the black river, I made the deeply unhelpful mistake of turning on my phone flashlight. Suddenly, every ripple became a potential apex predator. I quickly realised that with the light off, the situation downgraded from “blockbuster National Geographic documentary about natural selection” to “spontaneous night swim with consequences.”
With only my end goal – the shore – in mind, things were much less frightening.
Lesson four: nature reigns supreme
The absurdity of that first night could have easily set the tone for my time in Botswana, but it didn’t – over the next week, I saw the best of what Botswana had to offer.
At Moremi, we watched a pride of lions draped in the shadow of a tree in lazy intimacy, elephants appeared from all corners, zebra blocked paths with complete indifference, and towering baobabs stood watch in the distance. Across the Delta, the Mokoro safari was the true prize, my fingers trailing through glassy water as my poler steered us through reeds, keeping a respectful distance from nearby hippos.
Across the Makgadikgadi Pans – amongst the largest salt pans on earth – the scene was like something out of a fairytale, replete with hundreds of elephants, hippos, zebras, wildebeest, and giraffes, but few predators. In the four hours we spent there, we saw no other vehicles; our only company for lunch was a series of elephants playfully passing by our jeep.
At the nearby and otherwise barren Nxai Pan, the watering holes absolutely teemed with life and death alike, as wildebeest, springbok and elephants sought an escape from the drought, while vultures feasted nearby on the carcasses of those who could not.
For all that Botswana taught me, the biggest lesson was that nature is both remarkably beautiful, and completely uninterested in your plans.
TRAVEL NOTEBOOK
Best time: July – September for peak water levels and wildlife.
Getting there: Fly Australia → Johannesburg → Maun (gateway to the Delta).
Stay: Base yourself outside Maun (except for Magkadikadi and a helicopter ride over the Delta). Aim for Moremi, Chobe or Chief’s Island.
Cost: ~$3,500–$4,500 per person for a 5‑day shared safari (more for premium lodges, less for camping).
READ ALSO: Along the Silk Road’s living cities
