Surviving the Kalahari

To project the impression that this trip has been all work and no play would be a lie.  The reality is, this experience puts together 10-15 people at a time, each of whom is a highly intelligent, ambitious, and often travel-accomplished individual.  These individuals also are coming from a world where they had absolutely no free time, and suddenly thrust into beautiful weather and more abundant leisure time; not to mention the fact that in a few years, the lot of them will have successful careers, but far less opportunity to enjoy their financial success.

The result is a nearly automatic new circle of friends.  One in which someone as socially challenged as myself, ordinarily too awkwardly nerdy to be brought into public, becomes merely above-average in terms of nerdiness.

This is the vehicle we took on safari.
I'm sure you're surprised it didn't start our second day.

Within 24 hours of arrival, we had successfully organized a group of 10 people who decided to go camping in the Kalahari desert.  Given any other circumstance, perhaps this would be a feat; however, it seemed nearly inevitable here.  We had hired a complete stranger to drive us 4 hours outside of the city and into the wild.  There were no instructions for preparation; simply to be ready for pick-up at 8AM.

This was my first journey outside of urban Gaborone and into the surrounding areas of Botswana.  Nearly immediately the differences were clear.  Donkeys, cows, and goats were very frequently seen on the side of the road, released from their pens to feed on the grass next to the road or in the median.  The landscape was unlike any others I’ve seen; the soil was replaced with a reddish sand, that gradually faded to the more traditional fine, tan sand one associates with a desert.  It was remarkably flat with only the rare hill or mesa jutting quite prominently into the skyline.

Random view out the side of the car.  Perfect sky.

We passed through multiple villages.  Most were predominantly consisting of small, one-room circular buildings with thatched, peaked roofs.  The people would be seen working the fields, herding animals, or gathered en masse for soccer games.  Whole families would ride on the back of a pick-up, driving full-speed down a highway.  Crops would be pulled in carriages pulled by 3 to 5 donkeys.  The locals would hawk their sweetroot and watermelons as we passed.  Most would stop and wave at our odd-appearing caravan, and we frankly felt like celebrities.  The weather was perfect.  The sky crystal clear.  The scenery was unforgettable.  And this was before we even arrived at our destination.

Boston Anna is also obsessed with capturing the million
butterflies in a photo.

After 4 hours in cramped quarters, we arrived at Khutse game preserve.  Immediately we are struck with the overwhelming diversity of life.  There were nothing short of hundreds of butterflies gathered outside the watering hole as we entered.  Dozens of buzzing flies produced a noise comparable to an entire swarming beehive.  There were at least two preying mantises, a stick bug, some kind of leaf bug, and something large enough to be a goliath beetle.  Most remarkably, for once I wasn’t the only person immensely impressed with the number, quality, and size of these insects.

Within minutes of entering the preserve, a family of ostriches obstructs the road.  They quickly flee across a widely expansive pan-turned-airfield.  We proceed to our campsite, and discover what our toilet and home will look like for the next 24 hours.  With remarkable ease, our tents are pitched, a makeshift sink is created, and lunch is served.  We eat quickly and go on our first game drive.

Home-sweet-home.

For the next 3 hours, we drive up and down dirt paths that are hardly bigger than the vehicle in which we traveled.  We see animals in their natural state, free to roam and interact with humans and with each other in whatever way they please.  We see oryx, hartebeest, springbok, ostriches, kudu, weaver birds, yellow-beaked hornbill, secretary birds, kory bustards, huge vultures and hawks.  A dozen Lion King and Jurassic Park references are made.  Sadly, as dusk falls, we do not see a single carnivore (except the birds, of course).

We settle for the evening, and nearly automatically everyone finds a role in preparing dinner.  A fire is made, and a surprisingly delicious spaghetti with a chicken & vegetable stir fry is thrown together (with wine, of course; we may be in the desert, but there’s no reason to be uncivilized).  Stories are told around the campfire under the most amazing night sky I am likely to ever see. This was one of the single biggest highlights of the trip; picture a planetarium with the brightness turned up to 11. There was actually a faint haze representing the arm of our Milky Way. This was the backdrop to a cacophony of exotic birds and animals. As we get ready to go to bed our guide, Leonard, warns us that we are not allowed out of our tents at night, even to pee.  After all, the lions, jackals, and hyenas come at night.

This photo almost does the night sky justice.  Almost.
Courtesy of Chen Yan.

Suffice to say, I was not eaten that night.  But the fellow travelers who slept less soundly than I reported hearing the cackling throughout the night of nearby jackals.  I suppose learning how to sleep through the ruckus of Philadelphia nightlife has its benefits; I was blissfully ignorant of the danger until the following morning.

We awoke before 6, hoping to catch the predators who hunt during the night and early dawn when it is far cooler.  Needless to say, the lot of us are not optimistic; then again, who is at that time of day?  When Leonard spends the next 10 minutes trying unsuccessfully to get out truck to start, we are rendered even further disappointed and eager to return to bed.  Ultimately the problem is found, and we are on our way.

We see the same animals all over again.  I’m not saying the same species; I mean the exact same animals all over again in the exact same place.  Most of us are falling asleep.  At one point, at a ludicrously far distance, we see a group of oryx.  As is a typical response to our presence, they start running away, but in an atypical direction.  While we pay no mind, Leonard stops the car, climbs out onto the hood, and scans the horizon.  “There is a lion,” he says matter-of-factly.

Now he has our attention.  All 10 of us throw ourselves to the side of the vehicle, trying to catch a glimpse of the beast.  One by one, we spot her.  She is a fully grown black-mane lion, a species found nowhere else in the world but the Kalahari desert.  She is stalking the tall grass about two football fields away.  We are all snapping away at her, and comparing whose distant faint blur actually clearly shows a lion.  More than once, we lose her in the tall brush.

I LOVE THIS PICTURE SO MUCH.

Fortunately, Leonard knows a secret.  Apparently tall, wet grass is a lion’s kryptonite (as David Jin noted, “They’re cats.  They hate water.”), and eventually she would come back to the road upon which we traveled.  After about 30 minutes of watching for her, we discover he is right.  The lioness is about 30-40 feet ahead of us, plodding along the road.  Once we spot her, she bolts back into the tall grass.  She stops about 20 feet away, sits, and turns her head right at us.  We have about 15 seconds staring down an unrestrained lioness within charging distance; none of us waste this once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunity.

A family of ostriches runs to escape death.

We continue a game of cat-and-mouse (pun intended) down the road as she attempts to escape us, and we hope to follow her to the rest of the pride.  We fail to find her, but do ultimately find a jackal.  We later make it back to camp and pack up, each of us abuzz about what we had seen.  As a friendly reminder of the unrestrained nature of the preserve, on our way out, a family of ostriches (one male, one female, and about 8 babies) obstructs our way.  Rather than run off the road, they continue to run forward until we separate the entire family.  It’s evolution, I suppose; hopefully their next babies will know to turn off the road.










Words can only do so much justice for this trip. It was a priceless, incomparable experience. It was filled with so much beauty, and so I leave you with a VERY small sample of photographs I took. I will eventually upload a full gallery on Facebook. Over time, as my travel compatriots do the same, I will link to their collections as well.

Blue clouds on a white sky.  Two vultures waiting on death.
Just another day in the desert.

The inimitable African sunset.