The Central Kalahari Game Reserve is one of the great empty spaces on the planet: 52.800 km² of desert, the second-largest game reserve in the world, right in the heart of Botswana. There are no villages, no roads, no phone masts: just red sand, golden savannah, endless skies and the murmur of the wind through the acacias. It is the realm of the Kalahari's black-maned lions, of the cheetahs of the open plains and of the San people, Africa's last hunter-gatherers.
Its jewel is Deception Valley, the fossil bed of a river that stopped flowing thousands of years ago. When the summer rains arrive, between December and April, these valleys turn into green meadows that draw thousands of gemsbok, springbok and wildebeest, and with them the big predators. It was here that zoologists Mark and Delia Owens spent seven years studying lions and brown hyenas, and wrote 'Cry of the Kalahari', the book that made this desert famous.
This practical guide explains how to visit such a remote place: when to go (the rainy season, the opposite of the rest of Botswana), how to get there in a self-sufficient 4x4 or by light aircraft to a lodge, what wildlife to look for at Deception, Sunday, Leopard, Piper and Passarge, how much the DWNP entry fees and camping cost, and why the Central Kalahari is the dream destination for a wild, solitary and truly adventurous safari.
For millennia the Central Kalahari was the territory of the San (Bushmen), hunter-gatherers who learned to survive without permanent water in one of the harshest environments on Earth. In 1961 the British colonial administration of the Bechuanaland Protectorate created the reserve precisely to protect them and allow them to continue their traditional way of life. Closed to tourism until the 1980s, it became known worldwide through Mark and Delia Owens' wildlife studies and, later, through the controversial relocation of the San in the 1990s and 2000s, which ended in landmark court rulings. That story, from the hunters' desert to the safari reserve, is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The great sea of sand and the remains of a prehistoric lake: ancestral land of the San, endless skies, ancient baobabs and white salt pans that stretch to the horizon.
Read the history of The Kalahari and the salt pans →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before Botswana existed, before European colonisers arrived or the first track was laid across the sand, the Central Kalahari was the land of the San, also known as Bushmen, one of humanity's oldest peoples. Genetic and archaeological studies place the ancestors of the San among the oldest populations on the planet, with a presence in southern Africa that goes back tens of thousands of years.
What's remarkable about the San is that they learned to live where almost nobody else could: in a desert with no permanent rivers or lakes, scarce and unpredictable rain and scorching summers. They knew every edible plant, every root that stores water under the sand, every animal track. They hunted with bows and poisoned arrows, followed the herds and the rains, and stored water in buried ostrich eggshells. Their society was egalitarian, with no chiefs and no ownership of land, and their culture (expressed in music, the trance dance and the rock paintings found all over the Kalahari) is one of humanity's oldest heritages.
The Kalahari may be called a desert, but it isn't an empty sea of dunes like the Sahara. It's a semi-desert of wooded savannah on sand, with grasslands, acacias and ancient fossil river valleys, carved by rivers that flowed thousands of years ago when the climate was wetter. In this seemingly hostile landscape, the San built a sustainable way of life that lasted for millennia, until the modern world caught up with it.
In 1961, when present-day Botswana was still the British Bechuanaland Protectorate, the colonial administration created the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Covering 52,800 km², it became the second-largest game reserve in the world, bigger than some entire countries. Unlike other parks, though, it wasn't originally set up for tourism, or even for wildlife. It was meant as a sanctuary for the San themselves, a place where they could keep living their traditional hunter-gatherer life without intrusion or influence from the outside world.
The idea, promoted in part by the anthropologist George Silberbauer, was to protect both the ecosystem and its people's way of life. That's why the reserve stayed closed to the public for decades: no tourism, no infrastructure and hardly any state presence. It's estimated that up to about 3,000 San lived there in those years, although in the driest years many of these nomadic groups left the area in search of water and resources.
For a long time, the Central Kalahari was a huge blank space on the map: a vast, almost inaccessible territory, home to a handful of San families and to wildlife adapted to the desert. Only in the 1980s did the reserve partly open to tourism, and the first adventurers arrived in 4x4s, along with scientists drawn by its lions and its fossil landscapes.
The Central Kalahari became famous worldwide thanks to two young American zoologists, Mark and Delia Owens. In 1974 they sold everything they owned and set up camp in the middle of the desert, in Deception Valley, to study its wildlife. They lived there for seven years in extreme conditions, with no running water and, for long stretches, no contact with the outside world. They studied black-maned lions and brown hyenas, two species science knew very little about.
In 1984 they published 'Cry of the Kalahari', a book that became a worldwide bestseller and showed the general public both the beauty and the harshness of this desert: lions that survive for months without drinking water, brown hyenas that roam huge distances, storms, droughts, and the magic of Deception Valley turning green after the rains. The book and the documentaries that followed put the Central Kalahari on the world safari map.
The Owens' work also had a controversial side. They spoke out against poaching and against the veterinary fences that blocked wildlife migrations, which set them against the authorities, and in the end they left Botswana. But their legacy lives on: thanks to them, Deception Valley and the Kalahari lions are famous names today, and the reserve draws travellers from all over the world looking for Africa's wildest and most solitary safari.
The second half of the 20th century brought the Central Kalahari its most painful and controversial chapter. From the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s and 2000s, the government of Botswana pushed to relocate the San out of the reserve to settlements built on its edges, such as New Xade and Kaudwane. The official argument was that modern life (schools, water, healthcare) couldn't fit inside a wildlife reserve. Some critics add that there was interest in its resources, including possible diamond deposits, and in a tourism 'without people'.
Many San resisted. For them, leaving the reserve meant losing their ancestral land, their way of life and their identity. The new settlements brought problems of uprooting, alcoholism and dependency. In 2002 the government cut off the water supply inside the reserve and dismantled services to force people out. This sparked a legal battle and an international human rights campaign led by organisations such as Survival International.
In 2006, after the longest trial in Botswana's history, the High Court ruled that the eviction of the San had been illegal and unconstitutional, and recognised their right to live inside the reserve. In 2011 the Court of Appeal went further and restored their right to use the water boreholes they depended on. In practice, however, going back has been difficult and limited, and the tension between conservation, tourism and indigenous rights is still an open debate. The story of the Kalahari San is a reminder that these 'empty' landscapes have ancestral owners and recent wounds.
Today the Central Kalahari Game Reserve is one of the most sought-after safari destinations for travellers who want to escape the crowds and find a truly wild, solitary Africa. Unlike the Okavango Delta or Chobe, here you can spend a whole day without coming across another vehicle. The reserve has a few luxury lodges with flights included, such as Tau Pan or Kalahari Plains, and a network of rustic campsites for self-sufficient travellers in 4x4s.
The Central Kalahari has two big draws. One is its desert-adapted wildlife (black-maned lions, cheetahs on the open plains, brown hyenas, gemsbok and springbok), which is at its best in the green season, when Deception and the other fossil valleys turn green. The other is its landscapes and skies: the vastness of the savannah, the total silence and starry nights that are among the clearest on the planet.
The reserve is managed by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP). It's also an example of the dilemmas facing modern conservation in Africa: how to protect a unique ecosystem and earn money from low-impact tourism while respecting the rights of the indigenous peoples who lived there for millennia. That's why visiting the Central Kalahari is much more than a safari. It's a look at one of the last great wild places on Earth, and at the long human history that goes with it.
