Makgadikgadi - Nxai Pan National Park

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Formerly, there were two separate reserves, one on each side of the Nata-Maun Road.
To the north was Nxai Pan National Park and to the south Makgadikgadi Game Reserve.


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These two areas have now long been amalgamated and are collectively known as Makgadikgadi Pan National Park.

However, the two components are very different from one another and for that reason are described separately.


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Cattle Trek Route (3)

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Mongongo nut trees are distinctive and characteristic of the north.
Their straight, heavy boles are unmistakable and in the hot season, after the rains have fallen, they appear like giant umbrellas.

Beneath them stand small groups (or pods) of elephant, the larger herd broken into smaller fragments so that all can benefit from the midday pools of deep shadow these trees create.


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The south end of the journey starts either at Phuduhudu (difficult to find and many thorn bushes) or involves entry or exit through Nxai Pan National Park and this, because of the high fee, is something of a disadvantage.

The entire countryside to the east, west and north of the park (except the forest reserve in the extreme northeast) is concession area.
The road through is a public one, but leaving the road or camping alongside it may infringe on the rights of the concessionaires, so some tact and diplomacy may be needed.


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Cattle Trek Route (2)

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One of the main routes to the north was known simply as the Cattle Trek Route, and so it remains to this day.

A feature of the drive along this track is the extraordinarily beautiful landscape.

Notable for its vegetation, it changes from grasslands to mopane woodland and, occasionally, to glorious "cathedral" mopane.

Most memorable - especially towards the northern end of the journey (which is a good day's drive that definitely demands a 4x4) - are the magnificent mongongo nut trees, also known as "manketti" to many South Africans.
Mongongo are a very important Bushmen food item, containing high levels of vitamine C.


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Cattle Trek Route (1)

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From the early 1900s, there was a small but steady movement of cattle out of north-central and western Bechuanaland, across the game-filled wilderness to the Zambezi River and beyond.

Tough, hardy men led these treks, and the stories of their encounters with the wild are legion.

With the advent of the motor vehicle, the Cattle Trek Route quickly became a track, which it still is.
Parts of it have disappeared, and both ends are difficult to find, but the experience of utter wilderness is immensely rewarding.


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Hunter's Road (11)

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North of Mpandamatenga, straddling the border, is the extraordinary Kazuma Pan, a virtual sea of golden grass and an exhilarating sight not to be missed - there are water paints within sight of the track, and I have never travelled this stretch without seeing animals on the great plain.


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I can write only enough to entice the reader to try the route, but there is a lot more to be seen - Stone Age sites -, mislaid 19th-century merchandise, strange initials carved on isolated trees, wagon-wheel scars on rocks, game animals, birds, the add hippo at Mpandamatenga and much else.

Do remember that the border road, a public track, does demarcate a boundary for several concession areas.
You do not have the right to trespass into these areas along the many side roads you will encounter.

Stay on the main border roads !!! 

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Hunter's Road (10)

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Scenically, the route is quite incredible.

The first part of the journey north from Ngwahla is some what trying with much stunded mopane countryside to negotiate, but then follows stretches of beautiful broad-leaved woodland and pans and plenty of game.


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As you approach the Deka River and Mpandamatenga, you reach high basalt terrain, where you enjoy majestic views over vast tracts of country.
There are well-wooded hilltops and wide, meandering valleys lines with swathes of tall grass through which streams make their way.

This is Africa much as it must have appeared to those who travelled this way 150 years ago.
Just south of Mpandamatenga is an astonishing grove of giant white-stem acacia (Acacia polyacantha), so tall that it looks like a hilltop looming on the distant horizon.


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Hunter's Road (9)

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Hendrick's Vlei was named after a servant who killed a giraffe there, and Jolley's Pan for another of Westbeech's men who died from the fever at Mpandamatenga.

Cream of Tartar Pan was known for the cross carved into the bark of a nearby tree by Jesuit priests.
The cross was still visible in the 1970s, but the tree is no more.

The Jesuits set up a short -lived mission station at Mpandamatenga, and there are several of their graves just metres across the border on the Zimbabwe side.

It used to be, but is no longer, a National Monument.


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Hunter's Road (8)

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The pan names themselves (Stoffel's Pan, for example) are full of history.

Christoffel Schinderhutte, or "Stoffel" as he was known, was an employee of Westbeech.
He left for the south from Mpandamatenga in July 1875, but his wagon broke down, he got drunk on "Cape Smoke" (home-made brandy), set off again while still out of his senses, knocked a servant off the wagon and crushed him to death beneath the wheels.


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Running amok, Stoffel then shot some of his oxen and one of his teamsters before rushing off into the bush, never to be seen again.
The only trace ever found were his veldskoens (boots) and part of his beard, which were taken to Shoshong and there identified.
How he met his death has never been established.


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Hunter's Road (6)

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The route along the watershed follows the border tracks (one on each side of the actual border line; there is no fence, except along a few kilometres when you reach Ngwahla).

The attractional here is that you pass by a series of pans, which often hold water for three or four months after the rains, attracting game ranging from elephant, leopard and lion downwards - a not surprising proliferation when you consider the game reserves or hunting concessions that lie on either side of the route.


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Hunter's Road (7)

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As you make the journey to the Zambezi, you can hear the pages of history turn.

It was along this stretch, after having spent more than a year as a "guest" of the Lozi King of the Barotseland, that George Westbeech returned with a wagon-load of ivory in 1872 - a cargo worth, it is said, more than £ 12.ooo !

It was this successfull expedition that prompted Westbeech to set himself up at Mpandamatenga.


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Hunter's Road (5)

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Inevitably, a short cut from Shoshong developed.

Instead of passing through Tati and Ramokgwebana, some travellers went directly north, through Tlhabala and along the eastern edge of Sowa Pan to Nata.

From here, the trail led northwest and then north to the watershed, intersecting the Hunter's Road at Ngwahla Pan.
This short cut came to be known as the Western Old Lake Route.


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Modern roads and fences have made the route from Shoshong and Tlhabala to Nata difficult to find; thus, the route we're describing begins at Nata and uses existing roads to get you to the border and Ngwahla Pan.


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Hunter's Road (4)

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Eventually, when early 20th-century politics dictated the need for defined international borders, the commissioners responsible could find no more expedient method for deciding the demarcation line than declare the wagon trail itself to be the boundary between Rhodesia and Bechuanaland.

And so it has been to this day.


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Hunter's Road (3)

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Hunter's Road was both a vital trade artery to the heart of Central Africa and the first major tourist route.


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Mpandamatenga was situated in a cool, well-watered area at the southern limit of the tsetse fly's range.

Visitors to the Victoria Falls, who came in ever-increasing numbers as the year passed, typically left their horses and oxen in the care of Westbeech at Mpandamatenga before setting off on foot to visit that remarkable site.


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Hunter's Road (2)

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Livingstone's early explorations had created great interest in the Zambezi and the surrounding area, and by 1860s traders and explorers were visiting the river in increasing numbers.


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Usually, they took the road to Bulawayo and then turned northwest at Ramokgwebana to follow the watershed.

In 1870 or 1871 an English trader by the name of George Westbeech began trading with the Lozi in Barotseland (now Western Zambia) and found it convenient to follow the route from Ramokgwebana to the northeast.


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Eventually, he established a residence and trading store at Mpandamatenga, and two more stores at Leshomo and Kazungula.
He also began to improve the wagon trail from the southeast.
The trail was extensively used in the next 20 years or so and became known as the Hunter's Road.


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Hunter's Road (1)

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This is the name given to a wagon road used extensively in the latter half of the 19th century to move supplies and trade goods over the northern part of what is now Botswana - from South Africa's Witwatersrand to the banks of the Zambezi at Kazungula.


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It is part of a network of routes that early explorers and travellers in this part of Africa developed to help them penetrate the hinterland.


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Shoshong, the Ngwato capital, was a major centre, and it was from there that the road to the north departed.

On the way it passed through Tati Town to Marula.


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Chobe: Savute, Mababe & Nogatsha (7)

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Even without water from the Chobe, Savute remains a place of enchantment and singular beauty, and it still boasts one of the greatest concentration of animals in southern Africa.


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It certainly is a place not to be missed.

A portion of Chobe National Park is the area around Nogatsha and Tchinga in the east.


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Visitors are encouraged to visit this area, partly to take pressure off the Chobe River front and partly, as development take place and access improves, because it is a really interesting area of the park that has been largely forgotten.


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In the south are the Chinamba Hills - no development or campsites there - with a number of Stone Age sites, and there are several pans  in the vicinity.


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Around Nogatsha itself, there is much "black-cotton" soil, which is really difficult to drive over when it is wet; at other times of the year, it is an amazing place with a mix of vast grassland and woodland and plenty of game.


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Chobe: Savute, Mababe & Nogatsha (6)

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We know from the accounts of early explorers that the Channel was flowing in the 1850s and until about 1880.


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At that time, the flow ceased and the Channel remained dry until the mid-1950s, when it inexplicably began to flow again.


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Since then, it has "switched" on and off several times.
It is this quixotic pattern that explains the dead trees to be seen in the Channel.


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No convincing reason for this paradoxical flow pattern has been proved.
Maybe, the most likely candidates are tectonic instability, which may be tilting surfaces first in one direction and then in another, and the coincidence of high flood levels in both the Chobe River and the Zambezi  - which backs up along the Chobe.


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You'll find San rock art at several places within the Gubatsha Hills; national park staff will be able to show you where.


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