Chobe Game Reserve
Chobe National Park, named after the Chobe River on its northern boundary is home to an exciting variety of large mammals and over 450 bird species. Chobe is renowned for having the highest concentration of elephants in Africa with truly impressive herds gathering during both the wet and dry season.
The Savuti area with its particularly strong populations of predators and annual zebra migration has set the scene for many well- known documentaries and is a prime safari destination in southern Africa.
Chobe comprises four main areas: the Chobe river frontage, the central pans around Nogatsaa, the Linyanti wetlands and the famous Savuti region that includes the Mababe Depression.
The Chobe River front from Ngoma in the west, including Serondela and extending towards Kasane is a rich riverine forest with a marginal floodplain. This northern section is considered to be one of southern Africa’s finest short safari drives – an area renowned for its elephant and buffalo during the dry season and a birder’s paradise year round. The Kasane/Chobe area can be visited on a day trip from the Victoria Falls Region of Zambia or Zimbabwe but can be quite busy for this reason.
Nogatsaa and Tchinga area is a pan speckled grass woodland approximately 3 hours drive south of Serondela. This lesser known area holds water well into the dry season and attracts a profusion of game between August and October. The area is particularly good for viewing eland.
The Linyanti wetlands are located where the north-western corner of Chobe meets the Linyanti River affording a very short stretch of river frontage. This is a fragment of almost 900 square kilometres of the secluded Linyanti Swamp – an area that is further expanded by the Selinda Reserve in the west and Namibia’s remote Mamili National Park on the northern bank of the Kwando River. The area’s relative inaccessibility and remoteness makes it one of our favoured safari destinations. See Linyanti and Selinda for more detail.
Savuti lies in the western corner of Chobe and is one of Botswana’s best-known wildlife areas. Savuti covers almost 5000 square kilometres and includes the so-called Savuti Marsh and Channel, the Mababe Depression and Magwikhwe Sand Ridge. The lions and hyenas and zebra migrations are synonymous with Savuti but the area also hosts an excellent diversity of other predators and plains game species. Its pans and waterholes in the dry season sustain a large population of bull elephants.
The Chobe Game Reserve can be combined with the Linyanti Wetlands and the Okavango Delta in a superb Safari circuit which can be further enhanced by adding the Kalahari region or Victoria Falls in nearby Zambia.