The Makgadikgadi Pans

The Makgadikgadi Pans, in central Botswana, are one of the largest salt flats in the world, the shimmering white bed of a vast ancient lake that dried up long ago, stretching to the horizon in a surreal, silent emptiness. In the dry season the cracked white pans are an otherworldly landscape of eerie stillness, home to habituated meerkats and dotted with baobab islands, while the summer rains transform them into shallow lakes that draw great flocks of flamingos and a spectacular zebra migration.

What you actually see

• The salt pans - the vast, surreal white emptiness of the flats.
• The meerkats - the habituated meerkat colonies of the dry season.
• The zebra migration and flamingos - the wet-season wildlife spectacle.
• The baobab islands - the ancient baobabs on the pan's edges.

When to go

The two seasons offer utterly different experiences: the dry season, May to October, for the surreal white emptiness, star-filled skies, quad-biking and meerkats, and the wet season, December to March, for the flamingos, zebra migration and green transformation.

Honest expectations

It is remote and surreal rather than a classic Big Five safari, so its appeal is the otherworldly landscape, the sense of vast space and silence, the star-filled skies and specific experiences like the meerkats or the wet-season migration. The two seasons are so different that what you see depends entirely on timing. It is reached by four-wheel drive or fly-in camps, a unique and atmospheric wilderness.

Nearby

The Nxai Pan with its baobabs, the Okavango Delta and the town of Maun are within reach.