Top Places to Visit In Botswana On Your Next Vacation

Foods – GASTRONOMY IN BOTSWANA

The variety of dishes to eat in Botswana lives up to the name that its cuisine has created. In many countries around the world, Botswana’s cuisine is known as the Rainbow’s Gastronomy. The country’s ethnic wealth has a lot to do with this in this sense.

This country has a huge variety of traditional dishes, the ingredients of which include meat from different animals, cereals, nuts, fruit, as well as fish and seafood. Among the varieties of meat to eat in Botswana, besides the usual beef, goat, and deer you can find giraffe, ostrich meat and oryx meat.

In the tubers and cereals area, millet, sorghum and native products such as bogobe and mabele are part of many recipes in the country. Peanuts, as well as the sought-after Kalahari truffle,  are delicacies that you can also try in this African country.

As for seafood, oysters, lobsters, and clams are high-quality products that you can eat in Botswana. For its part, tuna is the preferred fish, which is prepared in different ways.

Finally, as for fruit, you can savor papayas, bananas, and delicious avocados. As you can see, the Botswanan cuisine is extremely desirable. Now let’s find out more about some of its most emblematic traditional dishes. Places to Visit In Botswana

Dikgobe

This is one of the most traditional Botswanan dishes and consists of beans, corn, and lamb. The bean mixture is cooked over low heat, and when it is almost ready, the lamb is roasted. Then, everything is mixed in a single dish, which is served with sprigs of parsley.

Mogodu

This Botswanan dish is prepared with tripe. A stew is prepared with sliced tripe, which is served with potatoes and peas as an accompaniment. It is flavored with chili, ginger, and garlic.

Seswaa

If you like meat, another dish to eat in Botswana is Seswaa. To make it, beef, goat, and sheep are cooked very slowly until it is completely tender. It can be served alone, or accompanied by beans or rice, and is also used to fill sandwiches and other types of bread. Places to Visit In Botswana

Vetkoek

This type of minced meat burger is the star of fast food in Botswana. It is served in the customary round burger bun, and also has ground meat, onion, red pepper, spinach and occasionally liver. It is seasoned with curry, thyme, salt and chili sauce.

Phaphatha

Phaphatha is the bread of Botswana, and it is cooked in a dry pan. You’ll find it alone, or filled with meat. It is a very filling bread, so as a starter it can be quite heavy. You will also find it as breakfast or a snack in most places around the country.

Traditional Style Chicken

Without a doubt, chickens raised in the wild are tastier than farm-raised chickens. On top of this, the chicken is cooked in a three-legged iron pot on an open fire, which gives it the best flavor. This way of cooking the chicken has caused other food to be eaten in Botswana, and the authentic taste of traditional food is experienced. Places to Visit In Botswana

Porridge or “bogobe”

To prepare this traditional Botswanan dish, sorghum, corn or millet flour is placed in boiling water, turning into a soft paste, and is slowly cooked. Sorghum or corn is sometimes fermented, and milk and sugar are added. This dish is called Ting. Without the milk and sugar, it is sometimes eaten with meat or vegetables for lunch or dinner.

Another way to make bogobe is to add sour milk and melon to make lerotse. This dish is called tofu by the Kalanga tribe. Cereals are part of the basic diet in many tribes in Botswana.

But what about drinks? Below we will find out about the most popular traditional drinks in this country. Places to Visit In Botswana

Traditional Drinks

To accompany some of the tasty dishes of Botswana, you can try the famous beer, Bojalwa. This beer is made from the fermentation of sorghum, and those who try it adopt it as their favorite drink for the duration of their trip. For lovers of strong beer, Tho Tho Tho reaches 80% alcohol content.

But if you want to try a truly traditional drink, order Madila, the drink which is popular with the people of Botswana, which is made of fermented milk. For homemade liquors, Khadi is made from a base of distilled sugar and mushrooms. For soft drinks, Ginger is a homemade drink, made with ginger, sugar, and pieces of pineapple or other fruit.

Now that you know what to eat in Botswana don’t hesitate to try some of their traditional dishes and enjoy a simple, but very healthy and ecological cuisine.

Top Places to Visit In Botswana On Your Next Vacation

Chobe National Park

Chobe National Park is Botswana’s first national park, and also the most biologically diverse. Located in the north of the country, it is Botswana’s third largest park, after Central Kalahari Game Reserve and Gemsbok National Park, and has one of the greatest concentrations of game in all of Africa. This park is noted for having a population of lions which prey on elephants, mostly calves or juveniles, but also subadults.

Moremi Game Reserve

Moremi Game Reserve is a protected area in Botswana. It lies on the eastern side of the Okavango Delta and was named after Chief Moremi of the BaTawana tribe. Moremi was designated as a game reserve, rather than a national park, when it was created. This designation meant that the BaSarwa or Bushmen that lived there were allowed to stay in the reserve.

Central Kalahari Game Reserve

Central Kalahari Game Reserve is an extensive national park in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana. Established in 1961 it covers an area of 52,800 square kilometres, making it the second largest game reserve in the world

Tsodilo Hills

The Tsodilo Hills are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, consisting of rock art, rock shelters, depressions, and caves. It gained its WHS listing in 2001 because of its unique religious and spiritual significance to local peoples, as well as its unique record of human settlement over many millennia. UNESCO estimates there are over 4500 rock paintings at the site. The site consists of a few main hills known as the Child Hill, Female Hill, and Male Hill.

Nxai Pan National Park

Nxai Pan National Park is a national park in north-eastern Botswana, consisting of Nxai Pan, which is one of the Makgadikgadi Pan salt flats. Nxai Pan National Park lies just north of the Maun-Nata main road and adjoins Makgadikgadi Pans National Park on its northern border. The pan itself is a fossil lakebed about 40 square km in size. The National Park is also home to the cluster of millennia-old baobab trees, which owe their name to Thomas Baines, the man known to have discovered them. Baines’ Baobabs, as they are known today, are a sight sought by many travelers venturing into this untamed terrain of Botswana.

Kubu Island

Kubu Island is a dry granite rock island located in the Makgadikgadi Pan area of Botswana. The island is located a few kilometers away from Orapa and Letlhakane mining towns and can be accessed through Mmatshumo in the Boteti district. The entire island is a national monument, and is considered a sacred site by the indigenous people of the area. It is accessible by four wheel drive vehicles and has basic camping facilities. The campsite is run for the benefit of the local population. Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson described the island as “just about the most astonishing place I’ve ever been” on the Botswana Special episode.

Makgadikgadi Pans National Park

Game reserve in salt flats with baobabs

Nxai Pan

Nxai Pan is a large salt pan topographic depression which is part of the larger Makgadikgadi Pans in northeastern Botswana. It lies on the old Pandamatenga Trail, which until the 1960s was used for overland cattle drives. The area is speckled with umbrella acacias and is said to resemble the Serengeti in Tanzania. The Nxai Pan was added to the National Park System to augment the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park, thus providing an enlarged contiguous area of natural protection. The ‘x’ represents a palatal click sound. Click sounds are typical of the Khoisan languages and some southern Bantu languages.

Mokolodi Nature Reserve

Mokolodi Nature Reserve is a private not-for-profit game reserve in southern Botswana. Founded in 1994 by The Mokolodi Wildlife Foundation, it is situated on 30 square kilometres of donated land, 10 kilometres south of the capital Gaborone. The nature reserve is inhabited by a wide variety of indigenous African game, bird and reptile species, some of which are rare and vulnerable to the threat of extinction. The southern white rhinoceros herd at Mokolodi Nature Reserve is part of a national breeding programme, which contributes to the rebuilding of the national herd in Botswana.

Khama Rhino Sanctuary

Khama Rhino Sanctuary is a community based wildlife project in Botswana. The animal shelter was established in 1992 to assist in saving the vanishing rhinoceros, restore the historic wildlife populations and provide economic benefits to the local Botswana community through tourism and the sustainable use of natural resources. Covering approximately 8585 hectares of Kalahari Sandveld, the sanctuary provides prime habitat for white and black rhinos as well as over 30 other animal species and more than 230 species of birds.

Baines Baobabs

Ancient trees named after an explorer

Khutse Game Reserve

Khutse Game Reserve is a game reserve in Botswana.

Deception Valley

Springboks & big game around a dry pan

Meno-A-Kwena Tented Camp

Safari and camping

Lake Ngami

Lake Ngami is an endorheic lake in Botswana north of the Kalahari Desert. It is seasonally filled by the Taughe River, an effluent of the Okavango River system flowing out of the western side of the Okavango Delta. It is one of the fragmented remnants of the ancient Lake Makgadikgadi. Although the lake has shrunk dramatically beginning from 1890, it remains an important habitat for birds and wildlife, especially in flood years. Lake Ngami had many famous visitors during the 19th century. In 1849 David Livingstone described it as a “shimmering lake, some 80 miles [130 km] long and 20 [30 km] wide”. Livingstone also made a few cultural notes about the people living in this area; he noticed they had a story similar to that of the Tower of Babel, except that the builders’ heads were “cracked by the fall of the scaffolding”. Charles John Andersson and Frederick Thomas Green also visited the area in the early 1850s. Frederick Lugard led a British expedition to the lake in 1896. Arnold Weinholt Hodson passed through the area on his journey from Serowe to Victoria Falls in 1906. Ngami Lacuna, a methane lake on Saturn’s moon Titan, is named after this lake.

Kgale Hill

Kgale Hill is a hill located in Gaborone, Botswana. Nicknamed “The Sleeping Giant”, Kgale Hill reaches a summit elevation of 1,287 metres above sea level. The hill used to be home to a television repeater and is now a tourist destination.

African Horseback Safaris, Macatoo Camp

Safari and equestrianism

Mabuasehube Game Reserve

Mabuasehube Game Reserve is a park in Botswana. In 1992 it was incorporated into Botswana’s Gemsbok National Park, and in 2000 it became part of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.

Tau Pan

Safari, game reserve and safari lodge

Northern Tuli Game Reserve

Game reserve, safari and wildlife

Sedudu

Sedudu Island is a fluvial island in the Chobe River, in Botswana adjacent to the border with Namibia. The island was the subject of a territorial dispute between these countries, resolved by a 1999 ruling of the International Court of Justice that the border runs down the thalweg of the river immediately north of the island. The island is approximately 5 square kilometres in area, with no permanent residents. For several months each year, beginning around March, the island is submerged by floods. The Island is one of the top tourist attractions in Chobe.

National Museum and Art Gallery

The Botswana National Museum, also known as the National Museum and Art Gallery, is located in the Botswana capital of Gaborone and is a multi-disciplinary institution that includes the National Art Gallery and Octagon Gallery, as well as—since November 2007—the National Botanical Garden. It displays traditional Botswana crafts and paintings and aims to celebrate the work of local artists. The museum is also involved with the preservation of Tsodilo, the country’s first world heritage area, among other efforts. It is the caretaker of Tsholofelo Park, the burial place of the “negro of Banyoles,” known as “El Negro” in Botswana, following the body’s return from the Darder Museum of Banyoles, in Spain. The museum was established in 1967 via an Act of Parliament and it officially opened to the public in 1968. The museum celebrated a year-long 40th anniversary in 2008 under the banner of “Museum as Agents of Social Change and Development”, mirroring that used by the International Council of Museums.

Mashatu Game Reserve

Game reserve, hunting and wildlife

Guma Lagoon

Gcwihaba

Gcwihaba is a cave in Botswana located in Okavango Delta region. The Gcwihaba Caves were part of the Kalahari landscape around 2 million years ago, at least for the entire period of the Pleistocene.The name of the cave is a San word and stands for “hyena’s lair”. The cave is situated 10 km away from the Namibian border. In 1932 it was first shown to a European, Ghanzi region farmer Martinus Drotsky, and the main cavern was named Drotsky’s cavern after him. Gwchihaba is a Botswana National Monument under the Monuments, Relics and Antiquities Act, and has been put forward to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999. It is the type locality of the mineral gwihabaite. Even though nothing was found in the first 50 cm of cave during the excavations to affirm that the cave was settled as a camp, 51 stone artefacts were released in the upper 50 cm of the cave. 50-80 cm of the cave is called The Terminal Pleistocene charcoal layer. More cultural relics were observed in this layer. Bones of African bullfrogs and pieces of ostrich eggshell were among the findings.

Sunday Pan

Camping

Botswana Craft

Helicopter Horizons

Domboshaba

Domboshaba ruins is a cultural and heritage site in Botswana originally occupied towards the end of the Great Zimbabwe period. The site is a respected place for the people living in the region and it is believed that the chief lived on the top of the hill together with his helpers or assistants. The phrase Dombo means hill and the word Shaba means red. Domboshaba is also called the Luswingo used to be the settlement of the Great chief of that time. The ruins are similar to the Mwenemotapa. The chief’s wife settled below the hill. Domboshaba has a natural water well called the Mantenge Well which never dries up: the well is 7 metres deep and is situated in the rock.

Kalahari Basin

The Kalahari Basin, also known as the Kalahari Depression or the Okavango Basin, is an endorheic basin and large lowland area covering over 2.5 million km² covering most of Botswana and Namibia, as well as parts of Angola, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The outstanding physical feature in the basin, and occupying the centre, is the large Kalahari Desert. The perennial river bifurcation of Selinda Spillway, on the Cuando River, connects the Kalahari basin to the Zambezi Basin.

Pom Pom Camp

Ghoha Hills

Passarge Valley

Camping

Deception Pan

Christ the King Cathedral

Christ the King Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church in Gaborone, Botswana. It is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gaborone. The current bishop is Valentine Tsamma Seane.

Kgosi Sechele I Museum

The Kgosi Sechele I Museum is a national museum located in Molepolole, Botswana.The museum was founded in 1902 and was made open to the public in 1992. Highlights include much memorabilia relating to the famous explorer David Livingstone.

Game Reserve Road

Nature and shopping

Mogotlho Safari Lodge

Safari lodge, camping and safari

Gaborone Dam

The Gaborone Dam is a dam on the Notwane River in Botswana with a capacity of 141,100,000 cubic metres. The dam is operated by the Water Utilities Corporation, and supplies water to the capital city of Gaborone

Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park

Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is a large wildlife preserve and conservation area in southern Africa. The park straddles the border between South Africa and Botswana and comprises two adjoining national parks: Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in South Africa Gemsbok National Park in Botswana The total area of the park is 38,000 square kilometres. Approximately three-quarters of the park lies in Botswana and one-quarter in South Africa. Kgalagadi means “place of thirst.” In December 2015, media reports claimed that rights for gas-fracking in more than half of the Botswana portion of the park had been sold. The Botswana government later refuted these reports.

Chobe Forest Reserve

Safari lodge and safari

Xugana Lagoon

Safari

Polentswa Wilderness Trail

Camping

Tsodilo Hills

Khama III Memorial Museum

Museum

Limpopo Lipadi Private Game and Wilderness Reserve

The Limpopo-Lipadi Game and Wilderness Reserve is a large, privately owned game reserve in Botswana which sells shares of that reserve to the public.

Tswapong Hills

The Tswapong Hills are a mountain range in the Central District, Botswana. They rise to an elevation of 300 to 400 m above the hardveld of the almost 900 m high surrounding plateau. Geologically, these flat-topped hills are similar to the Waterberg Massif, located about 100 km to the south. The Tswapong Range receives relatively more moisture than the surrounding sandy plain of Mopane woodland. The rocky cliffs are made of porous rock that absorbs rainwater, which then seeps out forming permanent cascades and pools, such as the Phothophotho Gorge. The Lotsane River flows at the feet of the Tswapong Hills on their northern side. One of the main attractions of the hills is the spectacular Moremi Gorge.

Savuti Chobe NP

Piper pan

Camping

Aha Hills

ISKCON BOTSWANA TEMPLE

Temple

Trinity Church

Mogonye Gorge

Nature

Ngotwane River

The Notwane River is a river in southeastern Botswana. Certain sections of its course form the international boundary with South Africa. Its mouth is at the head of the Limpopo River. It has a catchment area of 18,053 square kilometers.

Passarge Pan

Camping

Tachila Nature Reserve

Camping and nature

Chapman’s Baobab

Lesholoago Pan

Camping

National Botanical Garden

The National Botanical Garden is a 7-hectare park located along the Notwane River 3 kilometres south-east of the city center of Gaborone. The National Botanical Garden first opened on 2 November 2007 with the purpose of protecting Botswana’s heritage. The park is managed under the Natural History Division of the Botswana National Museum. It is the first botanical garden in Botswana, housing indigenous plants from around Botswana.

Mmamagwa

Kudiakam Pan

Leopard Pan

Xade Gate

Camping

Thamalakane River

Lotsane

The Lotsane River is a river in southeastern Botswana. It is a seasonal left hand tributary of the Limpopo River and has a catchment area of 9,748 square kilometers

Gabane Pottery

Pottery

Jamia Mosque

Bahurutshe Cultural Village

Otse Hill

Otse Hill is a peak often cited as the highest point of Botswana, with a reported altitude of 1,491 metres. It is located in the village of Otse, South-East District. Its highest cell on SRTM data is 1,486 meters – 4875 feet. The 1999 Department of Surveys and Mapping 1:50,000 scale topographic map shows a “trigonometrical station” on the Otse Peak summit with an elevation of 1,491 meters – 4892 feet. The Monalanong Hill or the Tsodilo Hills are also often given as the highest point in Botswana.