Adventurous travellers seeking a truly remote African safari will be thrilled to discover it in central Botswana. The Central Kalahari Game Reserve is the second largest game reserve in the world and one of the least visited, nothing can prepare you for the sheer wonder of exploring this vast reserve with its wild, untouched beauty. The landscape is dominated by sand veld, acacias, and Kalahari apple-leaf, interspersed with grasslands and dotted with occasional sand dunes, pans and fossil river valleys. While the reserve is home to an impressive variety of wildlife, there is one animal that is rather obviously absent, the human being. It is this lack of human traffic, combined with the park’s lack of infrastructure, that makes for a challenging and marvellously authentic African experience. Visitors need to be entirely self-sufficient but those willing to make the effort will be richly rewarded.
The dramatic desert of legend and home of the San. Tau Pan Camp was the first lodging welcomed to the famous Central Kalahari Game Reserve and an unprecedented opportunity to establish camp in one of the world's largest pristine wildernesses. It occupies unrivalled placement high on a dune ridge, overlooking a waterhole and game-rich plains. The vistas are magnificent — vast skies, tremendous savannah — and the camp design takes every opportunity to exploit this location.
The main area includes an open bar, lounge and dining areas all set around the fireplace, which is the ideal spot for spotting game at the waterhole. 'Tau' means lion in Setswana and the pan is so named for its pride of iconic black-maned Kalahari lions, who are frequent visitors to the camp.
Discover the land of the lion through ancient San eyes. Also known as the Bushmen in Botswana, indigenous trackers provide life-giving insights on surviving in this harsh paradise during a spellbinding nature walk. When you enter this world as a student, it ensures the conservation of their fast-vanishing San culture. Stargazing is astonishing in this remote location and best experienced with a night below the Milky Way on the sleepout deck.
