Botswana · Southern Africa
Chobe and the Linyanti.
Chobe holds one of the largest elephant populations in Africa, concentrated along its river frontage in the dry months.
Photo Ida Kymmer / Unsplash
The river frontage near Kasane is accessible and busy, and the boat cruise there is a genuinely different way to view game. The Linyanti and Savuti, deeper into the park and its adjoining concessions, are quieter and more serious safari country.
Chobe's proximity to Victoria Falls is the reason so many itineraries pair the two.
How do you get to Chobe National Park?
Kasane, on the park's northern edge, has its own airport and is where the riverfront lodges are. Victoria Falls Airport in Zimbabwe is roughly an hour and a half away by road through the Kazungula border, and the Kazungula Bridge links Botswana directly to Zambia, which is why Chobe and the Falls are so often combined.
What is the difference between the Chobe riverfront, Savuti and the Linyanti?
The riverfront near Kasane is the accessible part: game drives along the floodplain and boat safaris on the river, with day visitors alongside. Savuti, deep in the park, is open, dry and known for its predators. The Linyanti, to the west, is largely private concession country beside the Linyanti swamps, with low vehicle numbers and the freedom to drive off-road and at night.
Why take a boat safari on the Chobe River?
Because the animals come to the water. From a boat you watch elephants drink, cross and swim at eye level, with hippos, crocodiles, buffalo and dense birdlife on the banks, and nobody minds a boat drifting close the way they would a vehicle. Several operators run boats fitted for photography.
How long should you spend in Chobe?
Two or three nights on the riverfront covers the drives and the river. Adding Savuti or the Linyanti takes it to five or six, and those nights are the ones that feel like remote Botswana rather than a stop between the Delta and the Falls.
What is there to see in Chobe and the Linyanti?
Sample journeys that stop here
- Okavango, Khwai and Chobe →An eleven-day luxury Botswana safari from Maun to Kasane. A private concession in the Okavango Delta, where the camp drives off-road and at night; four nights in the Khwai Concession; then a lodge on the Chobe River, looking across to Namibia.
- Chobe, Okavango and Moremi →A nine-day luxury Botswana safari from Kasane to Maun. It opens on the Chobe River with game drives and a boat among the elephants, moves into the Okavango Delta by mokoro and motorboat, and ends in Moremi Game Reserve on Xakanaxa Lagoon.
What does Chobe and the Linyanti pair well with?
- The Okavango DeltaThe Okavango is an inland delta that never reaches the sea, and the flood arrives in the dry season rather than the wet one.
- Victoria Falls, ZimbabweThe Zimbabwean side holds most of the panoramic frontage, and the town is the region's adventure capital.
- Victoria Falls and Livingstone, ZambiaThe Zambian side of Victoria Falls gives the closest, wettest views, and Livingstone is the town that serves it.
- The Caprivi and the Zambezi Region, NamibiaThe narrow strip in the far north-east is green, riverine and completely unlike the rest of the country.
More journeys through Botswana
Planning
Elsewhere in Botswana
- The Kalahari and the salt pansThe Central Kalahari and the Makgadikgadi pans are the country's dry, spare, wide-horizon counterpoint to the Delta.
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