Travel Guides

Namibia is calm and empty almost everywhere, and its two real risks are Windhoek after dark and the road surface between towns.

Botswana safari camps are built on decks, stilts and sand, which makes access a question about each camp rather than about the country.

The pula is named after rain, which tells you most of what you need to know about how Botswana values the thing it has least of.

Botswana packs like a desert that floods, which means layers for cold mornings, dust protection, and far fewer clothes than you expect.

Botswana wants three blank passport pages, not two, and if you are traveling with a child it wants their birth certificate at both ends of the trip.

Botswana has good tarmac and genuinely dangerous roads, and the reason is not the surface but what walks onto it after dark.

Staying safe in Botswana: where crime is rising, what to watch for at lodges in Chobe, and the laws and health facts worth knowing before you go.

Zambia has very little formal accessible infrastructure, so the useful research is per camp and per operator rather than per country.

Distances in Zambia are longer than the map suggests, the roads are the real hazard, and driving after dark outside the towns is the line to hold.

The kwacha, a country where mobile money reaches further than cards do, and the reason no exchange rate appears anywhere on this page.

Zambia has three seasons rather than two, and the one you travel in decides almost everything you put in the bag before you leave.

Staying safe in Zambia in practice: the real risks are the road, the water and a set of laws that visitors do not expect, and how to manage each.