The river’s headwaters start in Angola’s western highlands, with numerous tributaries joining to form the Cubango river, which then flows through Namibia where it is called the Kavango and finally enters Botswana, where it is then called the Okavango.
THE OKAVANGO DELTA

Rivers flow to the ocean – not so the Okavango, which is not only a river but also one of the world’s largest inland water systems. The river’s headwaters start in Angola’s western highlands, with numerous tributaries joining to form the Cubango river, which then flows through Namibia where it is called the Kavango and finally enters Botswana, where it is then called the Okavango.

Millions of years ago the Okavango River flowed into the huge Lake Makgadikgadi (now Makgadikgadi Pans). Tectonic activity interrupted the flow of the river causing it to backup and spill into the sands of the Kalahari Desert where it fans out and forms a vast delta of wetlands and waterways. This unique system of lagoons dotted with lilies, narrow channels invaded by papyrus reeds, islands and shallow sheets of water that glisten in the sun supports a vast array of animal and plant life in what would have otherwise been a dry Kalahari savanna.

The Delta’s floods are fed by Angolan rains, which start in October and finish in April. The floods only cross the border between Botswana and Namibia in December and only reach the bottom end of the delta (Maun) sometime in July. This slow meandering pace is due to the lack of drop in elevation, little more than 60 meters over a distance of 450 kilometers. The Delta’s water ends in the Kalahari – via the Botetle River, over 95 per cent of the water has evaporated along the way.

During the peak of the flooding the Delta’s area can expand to over 16,000 square kilometers, shrinking to less than 9,000 square kilometers in the low period. Naturally this bounty attracts a huge variety of mammals and bird species, though on occasion they are almost secondary to the sheer wonder of the setting. The water moves into the Delta as the surrounding land dries out (winter months are dry in Botswana) and so huge populations of wildlife congregates on the edge of the newly flooded areas – May through October.

Okavango Delta Safari Botswana
The Delta is home to large numbers of animal populations including crocodile, red lechwe, sitatunga, elephant, wild dogs, buffalo, wattled crane as well as the other more common mammals and bird life. The best time for game viewing in the delta is from May to October. The best time for birding and vegetation is during the rainy season, November to April, as the migrant bird populations are returning and the plants are flowering and green.