Botswana is safari as it was meant to be: a country that chose low volume and high value, where the Okavango River pours into the Kalahari and fans out into one of the greatest wildlife sanctuaries on earth, a delta you explore slowly, camp by small camp, far from any crowd. It is the wild heart of this journey, and it deserves the nine nights this itinerary gives it.
The journey is bookended by a city too many travelers fly straight over. It begins in Johannesburg, in the house where Nelson Mandela edited Long Walk to Freedom, with a guided day through Constitutional Hill and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Then it flies north to Maun, a first night at Grays Eden, and into the delta for four camps in turn: Shinde, Wilderness Mokete, Wilderness Jao and Wilderness Chitabe. It returns to Johannesburg for three more days that stay with you: the Cradle of Humankind and the Apartheid Museum, a full-day feast through the city’s migrant kitchens, and Soweto by tuk tuk on the last morning.
Every step is arranged in advance with expert local guides and private touring, and the stays are worthy of the story: The Saxon and the Four Seasons The Westcliff in Johannesburg, five hand-picked safari camps, a boutique hideaway in Houghton between them, and a palace on the Bosphorus to finish. We invite you to experience Botswana the way it deserves to be experienced: slowly, personally, and in very good hands.
You are met at the aircraft door and assisted through customs and immigration, then driven straight into the city’s story. A privately guided tour of Constitutional Hill, once the Old Fort prison complex where both Gandhi and Mandela were detained and today home to South Africa’s Constitutional Court, is followed by coffee at 44 Stanley and a visit to the Nelson Mandela Foundation, where you will see the last office Mandela worked in, his personal books and photographs, and a copy of his Nobel Peace Prize. Your hotel is The Saxon, an all-suite sanctuary set in ten acres of gardens in Sandhurst, the house where Mandela himself lived while editing Long Walk to Freedom.
Fly from Johannesburg to Maun, the safari gateway on the edge of the Okavango Delta. Your first night in Botswana is at Grays Eden in Maun, time to settle in, breathe the bush air, and prepare for the camps ahead.
A charter flight lifts you from Maun into the Okavango Delta itself, landing at Shinde Airstrip. Shinde Camp sits on a palm-fringed island on the edge of the Shinde Lagoon, your first camp in the delta, and a camp that works both water and land: boating and mokoro excursions on the lagoon, game drives, guided walks, and catch-and-release fly fishing, with nights to the sounds of the bush.
Continue by charter to Wilderness Mokete for three nights, the longest stay of the safari, and its deepest chapter. Mokete is a nine-tent camp in the Mababe depression, at the delta’s eastern edge; its name means “celebration” or “feast,” for the herds that gather here. Tents carry sliding canvas roofs that open for stargazing from bed, and a sunken hide set at elephant eye level puts you in the middle of the action without ever leaving camp.
On to Wilderness Jao for two nights, the delta at its most indulgent: five suites and two villas woven into the floodplain forest, a spa, and the option of a star-bed sleep-out under some of the darkest skies on earth. The transfer day itself carries a highlight, a Helicopter Horizons flight out over the delta for a conservation and co-existence cultural experience with the communities who live alongside this wilderness.
A short charter hop and a half-hour drive bring you to the final camp, Wilderness Chitabe, for two nights: eight elevated meru-style tents on a tree island in the delta’s south-east, day and night game drives and guided walks, and a territory known above all for its African wild dog packs, among the most sought-after sightings in Botswana.
Fly from Maun back to Johannesburg, where you are met and driven to The Residence, a warm, bougainvillea-draped boutique hotel in the historic suburb of Houghton, eighteen rooms and suites of chandeliers, Persian rugs and garden calm, and an evening to land gently back in the city.
A full, privately guided day out of the city to the Cradle of Humankind: a guided descent into the Wonder Cave and the ancient chambers of the Sterkfontein Caves, closing at the Apartheid Museum and its Nelson Mandela exhibition. Tonight’s base is the Four Seasons The Westcliff, a hillside village of courtyards and gardens above the jacaranda canopy, where you will stay two nights.
A full day tasting your way around the city on the privately guided Migrant Cuisine Tour, Johannesburg told through the communities who fed it. Coffee and deli browsing with the Italian story; samosas and mango lassi in the Fordsburg Market; baklava and spice hunting; injera and a traditional coffee ceremony in Little Addis; a traditional African stew at Kalahari Thyme in the artsy Maboneng district; legendary peri-peri chicken and pastéis de nata at Parreirinha, a Joburg institution; and a final stop at Pantry, the remarkable deli from the team behind Marble Restaurant.
Your final day in Johannesburg completes the picture. A two-hour tuk tuk tour of Soweto, its famous historical sites and its hidden corners, local phrases, a stop at a shebeen for home-brewed tastes, and the famous Kota for lunch. Then a private transfer to the airport for the evening flight north, because this journey has one more chapter, on the Bosphorus.
Arrive in Istanbul and settle into the Four Seasons Hotel Bosphorus, a restored 19th-century palace on the European shore of the strait. The day’s touring goes past the postcard stops on a privately guided Old City walk to its lesser-known sites, the Istanbul that hides behind the famous skyline, before an evening on the water’s edge at the palace.
One city, two continents: a privately guided day crossing between Europe and Asia, the strait as the city’s main street. The journey closes the way it should, at the table, an evening food adventure through Istanbul’s kitchens and street stalls, a final feast, before the transfer to the airport and the journey home.
