Highlights of the Linyanti, Botswana

By Roxanne Reid
In a previous post I shared highlights of Chobe in northern Botswana. Although it’s one of the four ecosystems of Chobe, I’ve chosen to tackle highlights of the Linyanti separately. Here you’ll find the incomparable Savute Channel, Selinda Spillway and Linyanti River, a remote area of floodplain and woodland that offers memorable predator activity.

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​DumaTau camp

DumaTau (‘roar of the lion’) is on a private reserve on the western border of Chobe, close to the source of the Savute Channel. The raised platforms and boardwalks at this Wilderness Safaris camp give sweeping views of Osprey Lagoon, descending to the ground in a couple of places then beginning again just more than an elephant’s body-width later. This is so elephants can move through the camp unobstructed. There are lots of warmly inviting spaces to linger when you’re not out on a game drive or on a boat on the river. Our first night we were treated to singing and dancing by the staff during a bush boma braai. Lovely voices, especially when they sang about ‘Beautiful Botswana’.

Floating deck

If you go out on the lagoon at DumaTau you usually have sundowners on the boat, but we chose to dock and enjoy our drinks on the floating deck with its fire pit and safari chairs in a circle. The gentle movement of the water under the deck made us feel like African jacanas on a giant water lily pad. Two of the other guests worked for NASA and they used this deck later to give an impromptu talk about the night skies.

Wild dogs

When you see 13 wild dogs relaxing in the open near a waterhole, you get fairly excited, not least because they’re endangered and you’ve only seen them four or five times in a lifetime of safaris. We found them about 30 minutes before sunset after an exhilarating ride in the 4x4 through thick sand and winding twin tracks that allowed our DumaTau guide Evans Keowetse to show off his driving skills in difficult conditions. The light was no longer good for photographs but we didn’t care; we were thrilled to see so many of them so well. The drive back to camp in the dark through double-thick sand was long and a bit chilly but it didn’t wipe the grins off our faces for a moment.

Lion kill

So there we were with our guide Evans from DumaTau, settling in to watch six lions resting. That is, until an impala ram came walking by, his testosterone-pumped thoughts in this rutting season more on finding mates and chasing off other males than on danger from predators. In a flash the lions were up and on him, joined by another eight lions we hadn’t see behind us. Lots of growling, bickering, crunching and blood, and in just 15 minutes 14 lions reduced the impala to nothing but bones – harsh but amazing to watch the raw power of nature in action.
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The last elephants

On our last day at DumaTau, we took a long detour to the airstrip, unhappy to be leaving. The camp is close to an elephant corridor, and we found a huge herd of elephants browsing among the trees. Our guide Evans figured they were on their way to drink so we took a side track and planned to wait for them. Some 40 elephants were already drinking and before long there were about 100, including some very small calves. They were relaxed and passed so close to us it was like being part of the herd. This is the magic of Botswana.

Chill and let nature come to you

We also visited Selinda Camp in the Linyanti, one of Great Plains Conservation’s camps that are the brainchild of wildlife film-makers, photographers and conservationists, Dereck and Beverly Joubert. Despite having a beautiful tent and deck of our own, this was my favourite place to sit, near a painted mokoro and an intricate carved door from Zanzibar. It overlooked the Selinda Spillway where I could listen to fish eagles calling or hippos grumbling. A cooling breeze came in the open structure, so it felt as though I was still outside in nature. [Update: note that this camp was rebuilt and reopened in June 2019. Find out more about the new Selinda Camp, Linyanti and why to include it on your Botswana safari.]

Pool deck romance

In the cooler part of the day this romantic pool deck at Selinda Camp was another good place to relax. There was an airy feel to it, with wide open spaces and billowing muslin, a perfect setting for high tea before the afternoon game drive. There was also a breakfast deck around a fire pit, a walk-in wine cellar and a gallery where some Americans chose to have a family dinner one night. If you were shy or feeling like honeymooners, the staff would happily set up your dinner on the deck of your tent for intimacy.

Bathroom for a queen

Don’t laugh when I tell you that this bath at Selinda Camp was a highlight of our visit to the Linyanti. Most camps and lodges give you a shower and a few have lovely baths, but this freestanding oval in the middle of a carpeted bathroom as big as my sitting room back home felt impossibly romantic. The evenings were cool in early June so wallowing in a hot bath fit for Cleopatra was a welcome luxury.

Lion cubs

Leopard cubs, lion cubs, hyena cubs, we’d seen them all on our Botswana adventure by the time we got to Selinda Camp. But the cuteness continued with six cub cousins; three were around four months old and the other three about a month younger. We watched them wrestle and play tag, roll over to show their freckled white tummies, bite each others’ tails and chomp on the warthog kill their clever moms had caught for them. Later we watched the younger cubs suckling, and one of the older cubs climbed on to a termite mound. It managed to fend off the others for a while until mom yanked it down by its tail.

More wild dogs

We tried for three days at Selinda Camp to find wild dogs and finally got lucky the morning we were due to fly back to Maun. We set off on an adrenalin-fuelled chase after ten of them as they loped through the veld, jumping up occasionally with all four paws in the air to see where the rest of the pack was in the long grass. They led us to a kill and showed us how social they are, no growling or bickering or food fights – as there is with lions, the so-called social cats. High praise for our guide Donald Senase for his tenacity in finding what turned out to be the most thrilling wild dog sighting of our lives.

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