The safari country you drive yourself

The first rains fill the pans on Botswana’s Makgadikgadi grasslands, and the zebra come in to drink. This herd was filmed from the air near Jack’s Camp, on the edge of the salt pans.

From about November to March, thousands of zebra move onto these grasslands to graze the new grass, one of the longest zebra migrations in Africa.

Ask any overlanding forum whether you need a second vehicle and you will collect both answers within the hour, each delivered with total certainty. Both camps are right, because they are describing different places.

From Kruger's patrolled tar to the Van Zyl's Pass circuit, the solo question has a map, not an opinion. We drew it, column by column, with the season, your comms, your experience and your margin for error each getting a vote.

The Caprivi strip is the Namibia nobody pictures: rivers, floodplains and elephant herds instead of dunes. The tarred B8 runs about 510 km from Rundu to Katima Mulilo, any car can drive it, and Bwabwata's Mahango river loop is fine in an ordinary car in the dry season.

The wilder parks are another matter. Nkasa Rupara, the Caprivi's wildest, wants a 4x4, recovery gear and ideally 2 vehicles, and it floods in the rains. Go between May and October, when the game comes down to the rivers.

The satellite SOS on new iPhones and Pixels doesn't work in a single African country yet, and on the remote routes your mobile signal is gone for most of the day. A satellite messenger on the Iridium network, which covers the whole continent, is what lets you tell someone where you are.

Garmin's plans start at about US$8 a month for SOS alone, plus a US$40 activation fee. If you self-drive only once, rent a satellite phone with the 4x4 instead, from about R120 a day.

Every week from now on, we pick 1 animal worth knowing that isn't on the Big Five list, and this week it's the honey badger. It weighs 9 to 16 kg and stands about 30 cm at the shoulder, yet lions and leopards usually decide it isn't worth the fight: its thick, loose skin lets it twist round inside its own hide and bite back.

It also eats puff adders and cobras, helped by a partial resistance to their venom, and captive badgers have worked out gate latches and stacked objects to climb out of enclosures. It's mostly out at night, so a sighting is a real prize. Look it up in Wild Timbavati, our free guide to about 100 Lowveld species, before your trip, and read the full story behind the legend on the site.

On the road between Usakos and Omaruru, Omandumba is a working guest farm among the granite koppies of the Erongo Mountains, with a bush camp and campsites tucked against the boulders. It is malaria-free and built for self-drivers, each campsite with its own ablutions and fireplace under an enormous desert sky.

The draw is what surrounds it: San rock art across the farm, nature walks, and the open-air Living Museum of the Ju/'Hoansi. From N$350 a person a night plus a N$10 conservation levy, it is one of the best-value stops on a Namibia self-drive.

In Namibia's arid north-west, the species you know from Kruger do things Kruger animals never have to. Elephants walk 50 km between meals, lions pad down to the Atlantic to hunt seals, and black rhino roam gravel plains with no fence for 100 km in any direction.

There are only around 130 to 150 desert-adapted elephants across more than 100,000 square kilometres, which makes this the hardest game viewing in Africa. For the people who go, that difficulty is the entire appeal.

Been to Kruger lately? Reply to this email with your best 1 or 2 photos and tell us which camp or road you took them on: we'll credit you by name on the site. By sending them, you're happy for us to use them on safaridispatch.com with that credit.

That's issue 12. If it was useful, forward it to the friend who keeps talking about a Namibia road trip. If it wasn't, reply and tell me why. I will read it.

Murray Walker
Editor, Safari Dispatch

Safari Dispatch is an independent safari guide, not a booking agency. Rates and offers were checked at the time of writing; confirm directly with the lodge before booking.