Botswana Zebra Migration
Tens of thousands of zebras migrate across Botswana every year. We meet them at three points along the route.
March 6–18, 2027
13 days, 12 nights CLICK HERE to download your itinerary
$13,660 per person, see details for inclusions
The Migration That Came Back
For almost forty years, this migration did not happen. Veterinary cattle fences went up across northern Botswana in the late 1960s, cutting routes the zebras had used for as long as anyone had recorded them. In 2004, Botswana began taking the fences down — and the animals came back. Not from memory: plains zebra live about twelve years, so three generations had been born and died against that fence. No animal alive in 2004 had ever made the journey. Within four years they were running a direct route again.
Aerial surveys now put the Makgadikgadi system’s migration at around 24,000 zebra and 10,000 wildebeest moving together — some 34,000 animals. Nature didn’t need to be restored. It needed the fence removed.
Source: Bartlam-Brooks, Bonyongo & Harris, Oryx 45(2), 2011.
Three Landscapes, One Route
It isn’t a line. Permanent water sits in the north — the Okavango Delta and the Chobe River. The mineral-rich pans sit south, at Makgadikgadi and Nxai Pan. The summer rains pull the animals down and the drying pans push them back up. Closer to a triangle than a corridor.
We move with it: seven nights in a mobile tented camp through Makgadikgadi and Nxai Pan, then four nights at Jumbo Junction in the Okavango, reached by light aircraft from Maun. Botswana limits how many vehicles may be present at a sighting. That policy is the reason a lion here is a lion, and not forty vehicles arranged around one. It is also the reason Botswana costs more than places that do not limit it. We think that trade is the whole point.
Who You Travel With
Alex — British by birth, sub-Saharan by career. Fifteen years guiding and photographing across Africa. He travels with us on most Africa departures.
Andrew — Scottish by birth, married to a South African, Botswanan by choice. He runs the tented camp operation as a family business, and he is the reason we know where the herds are in any given week rather than where they are supposed to be.
Herman and his wife — they own Jumbo Junction in the Delta. On the right day you meet their kids after school, or ride their horses out to visit the zebras grazing a few miles away.
These are not vendors we found in a database. They are people we have worked alongside for years, and they are the reason this trip is not a route anyone could buy.
Why March
We meet the migration at three points along its route. At Makgadikgadi, often only the satellite herds — small groups of males out ahead of the rest. At Nxai Pan, the animals coming through properly. And in the Okavango, where the water is permanent, the late ones still arriving.
March puts us there as the rains taper and the weather is still warm. It also means three landscapes rather than one: salt pan, grassland, and delta. Different geology, different ground, different species in each. That variation is difficult to get on an Africa trip built around a single camp. It is the reason this itinerary exists in the shape it does.
We spent two years planning this trip, down to the smallest detail, and ran it in 2025. It worked so well we’re not changing a thing.