Fire in the Kalahari Desert NP

What can I say? Botswana was electric!

First of all I would like to say thanks to the people at Wilderness Safaris for providing us with such high quality lodges and guides. Also thanks to Safari AS in Norway for making all the arrangements for this trip. Thank you!

We travelled with South-African Airlines from Heathrow and I was pleasantly surprised by the high quality of this airline. Good service, and spacey seats – recommended. Botswana Airways’ Fokker was a bit more crampy, but the flight to Maun was rather short. From there we headed into the Central Kalahari Desert National Park and the adventure could begin.

Kalahari in the summer is hot – very hot. When the thunderstorms lit bushfires all around us it got even hotter. However it gave us some brilliant opportunities for night photography.

The bushfires were probably the most thrilling experience in the Kalahari, and the pictures came out pretty nicely to.

Dust-devil, made up of newly burnt grass just minutes after the bushfire past through the area, and the soot went through our car.

Lightning struck every night to light a new bushfire somewhere in the desert, often close to the camp

Kalahari is very different from most other national parks in Africa with mainly small game, but some extremely interesting species. We worked a lot with Honey Badgers, Aardwolf, Hornbills, Bustards, Bat-eared Fox and Stenbucks. We also found plenty of Oryx, Springbucks, some black maned Kalahari Lions and a couple of nice scorpions below the tent floor. Actually a couple of the lions also spent the hot hours of the day below the floor of the lodge cabins.

Honey Badger digging for scorpions at sunrise

The shy and seldom seen Aardwolf, a relative of the Hyena

A very poisonous Scorpion we found under the lodge floor

More on my journey to Okavango and Chobe later.

PS! Flying across the 40 degree Celcius Kalahari desert in a 5 seat Cessna was not my kind of journey...

Ole Jørgen Liodden trying to fit our gear in a rather small aircraft