Highlights of Botswana

Your holiday begins in style, with premium airport lounge access included before your overnight flight to Botswana.

Arriving into Maun, a short light aircraft transfer will bring you to the Okavango Delta – a land of labyrinthine waterways and grasslands that sustains one of the world’s greatest concentrations of wildlife. You’ll stay in the superb Sanctuary Baines’ Camp – a private concession whose five suites, hidden in a grove of trees, feature sky baths and star beds alongside their four-poster cousins.

Activities here range from wildlife tracking to game drives and cruises on the delta itself. While the Big Five are an obvious highlight, being punted along in a dugout mokoro canoe as hippos and crocodile glide through the lagoons is a true bucket-list experience.

Your next private airstrip flight will see you to the thatched bush pavilions of Sanctuary Chief’s Camp. Newly refurbished, it’s among the continent’s most luxurious lodges, complete with views – from your private pool – over what were once Chief Moremi’s royal hunting grounds. Today, they’re better known as the ‘Predator Capital of Africa’ with your daily morning and evening game drives and canoe trips bringing you up close to the local lion prides, leopards and hyena.

Return each night to soaks in oversized baths and outdoor showers along with cocktails and canapés served in the bush for those great raking African sunsets.

Fly on to the Makgadikgadi in the Kalahari Desert; once the world’s largest super-lake, today it’s a giant salt pan that seems to stretch without end. It’s the inhospitable setting for your luxury tented camp where muslin-draped walls, Persian rugs and mahogany furnishings recall a certain 1940s desert-safari chic. Its serene setting is shared with a unique collection of fauna and flora, with meerkats, giant baobab trees, migrating zebra, aardvarks and desert lions met on quad-bike rides, night safaris and game drives.

You’ll even have the opportunity to play the archaeologist, combing the lakeshore to discover the stone tools and fossils that evidence the origins of early man.

For a final treat, you’ll enjoy an exclusive morning with the Zu’hoasi Bushmen. Learn how they’ve carved a unique way of life in this unforgiving environment as you enjoy a traditional greeting, visit their village and walk with the tribe out into the bush. Along the way, their members will demonstrate hunting techniques passed down through the centuries.

You’ll then board your connecting, overnight flight back to the UK.