Best hotels in Makgadikgadi

Jack's Camp is set on a palm-clad island on the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans. The pans are one of the largest salt flats in the world, so the camp feels like an oasis of luxury in a truly inhospitable environment. Inside its 10 traditional-style safari tents, the sumptuous furnishings and attention to detail transport you back to the early days of travel in East Africa. Guests can explore the vast salt pans by quad bike, on foot or in a vehicle.

San Camp brings you forward into the future of eco-friendly, responsible travel by taking you back in time to an era where safari meant personal butlers and starry banquets. Huge, open, airy tents appear as an oasis on the desolate Makgadikgadi Salt Pan - the site of an extinct lake bed. This mysterious place is home to a healthy meerkat population—willed, but delightfully habituated—as well as desert-adapted wildlife, including brown hyenas, Aardwolf, bat-eared foxes and black-maned lions. Walk with a local San Bushman for a real-life history and biology lesson, or get an on the spot archaeology and geography lesson from your guide; navigate the vast moon-like landscape at your own speed, on the back of an ATV. Bedouin tents, Persian rugs and vintage accents conjure a true Lawrence of Arabia feel - the atmosphere is hallucinogenically romantic.

Found on the remote shores of a private concession in the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park, Kalahari Camp offers up a an ideal base for those looking to experience a unique area of Botswana in traditional safari camp style. The Makgadikgadi Saltpans stretch as far as the eye can see through the Kalahari Desert in the dry season, while rains in the wet season brings herds of zebra and wildebeest though the plains. Camp Kalahari nestles there, between the bush and the desert where the lack of electricity allows you to release your inner explorer.

Amongst the glitzy 5 star offerings Botswana is famous for, Meno a Kwena has barefoot bohemian luxe down to a T. With eight vintage-style tents perched thrillingly on the edge of a rocky clifftop, the views of the Boteti River and accompanying menagerie of animals are can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it gorgeous. Further afield, the activities are brilliant and very varied with game drives, scenic flights and quad biking on offer in three pristine wildlife sanctuaries. And all this is combined with Meno’s inherent passion for the bush, wildlife and community development, which just makes us love it even more.

Planet Baobab is a quirky oasis in the middle Botswana's lunar-like Makgadikgadi Pans, announced by a giant pink anteater statue on the road outside. Famous amongst the overlanding community (the camp sites are some of the best on the continent), the cool Baobab Huts make an excellent rest point for just about anyone looking to experience this strange slice of wilderness. It’s easy-going, festive and every likes a cold St. Louis beer, but rest assured that it’s also professional and well-organised with a host of accommodation options and a blockbuster of activities to suit all tastes and styles.

You'll find easy-going hospitality and the utmost in professionalism at Nata Lodge. There's something for every class of tourist - from the budget-minded to those seeking a more civilised bush experience. The main draw to this region is the Makgadigadi Salt Pans - a vast, barren, occasionally palm-flecked site of an ancient mega-lake (37 000 sq km). However, this is also a bird-haven with over 165 species in the vicinity. Where the Nata River delta feeds the Sua Pan it forms a breeding ground for multitudes of water fowl, including pelicans and flamingo in their thousands, which appear as a shocking mirage of pink amidst this muted landscape.