Annika one of our German guides returned from a Botswana Wildside BT14 camping safari and had an amazing experience in the National Parks of Botswana. I recently got back from a Botswana Wildiside camping tour, which includes five nights of wild camping in Moremi Game Reserve, Savuti and Chobe National Park.

You are likely to encounter wildlife very closely and to get visitors in your campsite. The visitors that we had were not only close but also breathtaking in size and sound of their roar!

In our first wild camping evening through the National Parks and Game Reserves of Botswana, we did not expect to see much more wildlife since we had already been lucky with the sightings of the afternoon. So we were busy cooking and chatting around the campfire when an almost earth shaking roar filled the air. This sound could not be far and with the help of our torches, we soon found out what it was – two adult male lions that passed the camp on the path just next to the campsite. We left the pots and beers and decided to follow them in the vehicle to view them closer and to see which direction they were going. We found them very soon and the roaring continued. They moved up and down until the early hours of morning, making us understand that they were busy marking their territory, which included our campsite! The next day, we saw them about 500meteers from the campsite, where they rested after an exhausting night of making clear to an intruder male, that this was their territory.

Our visitors on this tour left us in amazement – when and where do you ever get to see wild lions so close, without any type of fence? Due to the fact that we all reacted in an appropriate way, which means to stay calm, to NOT run and to just watch them closely as well as always checking where they were, we were able to enjoy this experience and to live in and with nature.