The Tuli Block is one of Botswana's best-kept secrets: a wild, remote corner in the far southeast, where the Limpopo and Shashe rivers embrace and three countries meet. It is a land unlike the rest of the country —without the waters of the Delta or the salt pans of the Kalahari—, made of red stone, steep hills, colossal baobabs and mopane plains, where large herds of elephants roam a landscape of wild, solitary beauty.
Its heart is the Northern Tuli Game Reserve, the largest private conservation area in southern Africa, formed from dozens of former farms joined together. Here, among concessions like the famous Mashatu —the 'Land of Giants'—, you can see some of the region's biggest tuskers, leopards, lions, cheetahs, enormous elands and abundant wildlife, almost always with no other vehicle in sight. It is also the mecca of horseback and mountain bike safaris.
This practical guide covers the Tuli in detail: how to reach this lost corner (including the famous cable car over the Limpopo), when to go, what to see —the elephants, the leopards, Solomon's Wall, the baobabs bearing Cecil Rhodes's signature, the confluence of three countries—, which activities make this destination unique and how to choose among its lodges. A different safari, intimate and adventurous, for those who already know the rest of Botswana or are looking for something out of the ordinary.
The Tuli Block is a strip of land with a peculiar history: after the Bechuanaland Protectorate was created, Chief Khama III ceded this area to Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company, which wanted to run its railway north through here. But the rocky, broken terrain made the railway unviable and dashed hopes of gold, so the company divided the land into lots and sold it to private farmers: that is why the Tuli is a rarity of private (freehold) land in a country of mostly communal land. Over time, many of those farms joined together to form today's conservation reserve. That story —from Rhodes's land to the largest private reserve in southern Africa— is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The political and human backbone of the country: the capital born with independence, the old gold town, the historic kingdom of the Bangwato and the rugged corner where three countries meet.
Read the history of The east and Gaborone →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Human history in the Tuli is far older than its colonial name. The confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, at the eastern end of the strip, was for thousands of years a crossroads of routes, cultures and trade in southern Africa. The region's rock shelters hold rock paintings by the San (Bushmen), hunter-gatherers who lived on this land for thousands of years and left their art on the stone.
Later, with the arrival of Bantu-speaking peoples and the rise of the Iron Age, the Limpopo-Shashe area became the setting for one of the most important civilisations in southern Africa. Just across the river, in what is now South Africa, the kingdom of Mapungubwe flourished between the 11th and 13th centuries. It was the first great state in the south of the continent, famous for its gold and ivory trade with the Indian Ocean world and for its celebrated golden rhinoceros. The Tuli was part of that world of stone kingdoms, trade networks and powerful elites, closely linked to Great Zimbabwe.
That is why the Tuli is full of archaeological remains: pottery fragments, trade beads, traces of metal smelting, granaries and stone walls that speak of organised, prosperous communities. Beneath its look of a wild, empty land, the Tuli strip holds the traces of a rich African history thousands of years old, long before any European arrived.
The origin of the Tuli as we know it is tied to one of the great figures (and villains) of southern African history: Cecil John Rhodes. In the late 19th century, Rhodes, through his British South Africa Company (BSAC), dreamed of an empire and of a railway linking Cape Town with Cairo, crossing the continent from south to north. To do that, he needed to run the line through the east of present-day Botswana.
The Bechuanaland Protectorate had been created under British administration in 1885. Rhodes pushed to control the whole territory, but the Tswana chiefs firmly opposed him (the story of the three dikgosi who travelled to London in 1895 is famous). As a compromise, Chief Khama III of the Bangwato agreed to cede to the BSAC a narrow strip of land along the Limpopo (today's Tuli Block) so the company could build its railway north towards Rhodesia.
But nature had the last word. When the BSAC engineers surveyed the terrain, they found that the Tuli was a jumble of rocky outcrops, gorges and rivers that made building a railway extremely difficult and expensive. On top of that, hopes of finding gold in any quantity faded away. The railway ended up being laid further west, along an easier route, and the Tuli was left as a strip ceded to the company but without the line that had justified handing it over.
With the railway project abandoned and the gold ruled out, the British South Africa Company found itself with a strip of land that was no use for its original plans. Its solution was to divide it up and sell it: the BSAC split the Tuli Block into farms and sold them to settlers and private commercial farmers, mostly white, South African and of other origins. That is how the Tuli's great oddity was born: in a country like Botswana, where the vast majority of land is communally (tribally) or state-owned, the Tuli Block became one of the few areas of fully private freehold land.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Tuli was a region of farms devoted mainly to cattle, on hard, dry, rugged ground that did not allow for much agriculture. Frontier life left its mark: there are ruins from that period, such as Bryce's store, which was fought over during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), and baobabs carved with inscriptions by settlers and hunters. It is even said that Cecil Rhodes's own signature was carved into one of those giant trees.
Over time, however, many farmers found that the land paid off better for wildlife than for cattle. The wildlife had never fully disappeared, and the tourism and conservation potential of that spectacular landscape began to become obvious. That change of outlook, from farm to reserve, would shape the Tuli's modern destiny.
Over the course of the 20th century, and especially in its second half, several landowners in the eastern Tuli made a pioneering decision: instead of keeping their farms fenced and given over to cattle, they began taking down the fences between their properties and joining them up so wildlife could move freely across a much larger area. From that union of dozens of former farms came the Northern Tuli Game Reserve.
Today the reserve is made up of around 36 freehold properties grouped into several large concessions, among them the renowned Mashatu, Nitani and Tuli Safari Lodge, which together cover more than 70,000 hectares. It is the largest privately owned conservation area in southern Africa, and Mashatu is the largest private reserve in Botswana and home to the largest population of elephants on private land in the region. With its wildlife protected and growing, the Tuli became a top-tier safari destination.
This model of private conservation on freehold land, funded by high-end tourism, made the Tuli a unique case in Botswana. As it is not a national park, the reserve can offer activities that are off-limits in state parks: night game drives, walks, and safaris on horseback and by mountain bike. So Rhodes's old land, which was meant to be crossed by a railway and worked as farms, ended up as a wildlife sanctuary.
Today the Tuli Block is one of the most original and exclusive safari destinations in Botswana. Known as the 'Land of Giants', its landscape of red rock and baobabs brings together the largest land mammals (elephants), the largest antelope (the eland), the biggest trees (ancient baobabs) and impressive birds such as the kori bustard. Its elephant herds, leopards and abundant wildlife can almost always be enjoyed in solitude, without the crowds of other destinations.
The reserve has earned a special place among wildlife photographers and among those looking for an active, different kind of safari: Mashatu's famous ground-level photographic hides, horseback safaris among elephants, mountain bike trails (which have hosted international competitions) and guided walks offer ways of experiencing the bush that you won't find in the national parks. All of this in a setting of great geological beauty, with formations such as Solomon's Wall and the meeting point of three countries.
The Tuli shows that conservation can grow out of unlikely stories: from Cecil Rhodes's imperial ambition and a failed railway came, in time, the largest private reserve in southern Africa. With a deep past as well (San art, the kingdoms of Mapungubwe, the Iron Age), this remote corner of south-eastern Botswana offers travellers an uncommon combination of wild nature, adventure and history, far from the busiest routes.
