Chobe National Park holds the largest concentration of elephants in Africa. The estimates run to something over fifty thousand in the wider Chobe and Linyanti system, and in the dry season they come to the river to drink in numbers that are difficult to believe until you are sitting in a boat watching several hundred of them cross in front of you. That is the reason to come and it is not oversold.
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The park is in the far north-east of Botswana, bordering Namibia across the river, and its headquarters town is Kasane, which sits at the point where four countries nearly meet. Victoria Falls is about eighty kilometres away in Zimbabwe, which is why most Chobe trips are part of a larger circuit rather than a destination on their own.
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What Is Here, and the Four Sections
Chobe is big and its parts are genuinely different, which most itineraries do not explain.
The Serondela or riverfront section near Kasane is the famous one and the easiest: floodplain along the Chobe River, enormous elephant and buffalo concentrations in the dry season, and the boat cruise, which is the signature Chobe experience and is unlike a game drive. Being on the water puts you at eye level with animals that are drinking rather than being watched, and it is where hippos, crocodiles and a vast bird list are.
Savuti, in the second photograph on this page, is the middle of the park: an open plain around a channel that has filled and dried unpredictably for over a century, famous for lion prides that hunt elephant and for a bleak spareness that is quite different from the river. Linyanti in the north-west is marshland and the least visited. Nogatsaa is the dry interior with pans.
A standard short trip does the riverfront from a Kasane lodge. A longer one drives through Savuti and on towards Moremi and the Okavango, which is a serious self-drive or a fly-in itinerary.
When to Go
The dry season from May to October is the season and the difference is enormous. As the interior pans dry, the animals concentrate on the permanent water of the river, so July to October gives the densest game viewing anywhere in southern Africa. It is also cool to warm in the day and genuinely cold at night, down to five degrees or lower in June and July, which is the single most underpacked-for fact about Botswana.
The green season from November to April brings rain, the animals disperse inland, the grass grows high and viewing is harder, but the birding is at its best, the landscape is transformed and the prices drop substantially. Savuti and Linyanti become difficult or impossible to reach by road, and the rainy season runs November to March with flash flooding on unsurfaced roads.
If you want the elephant spectacle, come between August and October. If you want green, birds and value, come in February.
Getting There
Kasane has an airport with flights from Gaborone, Johannesburg and Maun, and most visitors fly in. The alternative, and a common one, is to come by road from Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, which is about an hour and a half including the border, or from Livingstone in Zambia via the Kazungula bridge. Many trips combine Chobe with the falls for exactly that reason.
In the park, you are in a guided vehicle or a self-drive 4x4, and the boat cruises leave from Kasane and the lodges. Self-driving Chobe is possible and the riverfront is manageable; Savuti and Linyanti need high clearance, experience and preferably a second vehicle.
Is Chobe Safe for Women Travelers
UK FCDO: Botswana carries NO ADVISED-AGAINST AREAS ANYWHERE. The phrase does not appear on the landing page, the safety and security page or the regional risks page, and the advisory records that although there is no recent history of terrorism in Botswana, attacks cannot be ruled out, which is the standard formulation for a country with no specific threat. So nothing here is restricted and the whole of the advisory's content is crime, wildlife and roads.
The FCDO names Gaborone and Maun in its crime section and the Chobe lodges specifically. It records that ATTACKS ON TOURISTS ARE RARE but that VIOLENT CRIME IS INCREASING PARTICULARLY IN THE MAJOR TOWNS OF GABORONE, FRANCISTOWN AND MAUN, with hold-ups and robberies of restaurants during peak hours. House burglaries by armed gangs are common and do not often target tourists, but the advisory adds that THERE HAVE BEEN ISOLATED ROOM BREAK-INS AND THEFT FROM LODGES IN THE CHOBE AREA, PARTICULARLY RIVER-FRONTING LODGES. Its countermeasures are ordinary and worth following: lock your room at all times, use the safe, keep handbags and phones out of sight in a car, keep doors locked and windows closed at traffic lights, and do not stop for people at the roadside.
That paragraph names this park specifically and it is the most practical thing in this post. The FCDO records isolated room break-ins and theft from lodges in the Chobe area, particularly river-fronting lodges, which is exactly the kind of lodge most visitors book here. Its own countermeasures are the right ones: lock your room whenever you are out of it including when you are at dinner thirty metres away, use the safe, and speak to your operator if the accommodation does not seem secure. River-fronting rooms are open to the water by design, which is the point of them and also the vulnerability.
The FCDO's statement here is blunt and short: BOTSWANA HAS A HIGH NUMBER OF SEXUAL ASSAULTS. It adds that while FOREIGN VISITORS ARE UNLIKELY TO BE TARGETED, WOMEN SHOULD TAKE CARE WHEN WALKING AND AVOID WALKING ALONE AT NIGHT. That is a national figure rather than a named pattern, so there is no location to plan around and no specific scenario to avoid, which makes it harder to act on than Turkey's hotel-and-spa finding or the Philippines' named towns. The honest reading is that the general rules carry the whole weight here: a lodge or hotel transfer rather than a walk after dark, a room locked when you are in it, and a trip arranged through an operator rather than improvised, which on a safari itinerary is the normal arrangement anyway.
On a Chobe trip the structure helps considerably: you are in a lodge with staff, on guided drives and boats, and rarely walking anywhere alone. The FCDO's advice to avoid walking alone at night is the operative one, and in Chobe there is a second and better reason for it, which the wildlife paragraph below covers.
Two FCDO instructions about animals that visitors routinely break. First: ON OPEN HIGHWAYS, INSIDE OR OUTSIDE WILDLIFE RESERVES, THERE COULD BE DANGEROUS ANIMALS ROAMING THAT MAY BEHAVE UNPREDICTABLY, so the reserve fence is not the boundary of the risk and an elephant on a tarmac road at dusk is a normal event here. Second, and stated without qualification: DO NOT BATHE IN RIVERS AND LAKES, because YOU COULD BE ATTACKED BY WILD ANIMALS AND YOU RISK CATCHING WATER-BORNE DISEASES. That covers the Chobe and the Okavango channels, which look exactly like swimming water and hold hippos and crocodiles; hippos kill more people in Africa than crocodiles do. Always follow park regulations and the advice of park wardens, and note that it is illegal to buy, sell, kill or capture any protected wild animal or trade its parts, with severe sentences.
Read that as the real safety content of this post. Two specifics matter in Chobe. Lodges here are unfenced or partly fenced and elephants, hippos and buffalo walk through them: hippos come out of the river to graze at night and they are the reason you are escorted to your room after dark, not politeness. Accept the escort every time. And the instruction not to bathe in rivers and lakes is absolute on the Chobe, which holds crocodiles and a large hippo population; hippos kill more people in Africa than crocodiles do.
The roads are the statistical risk and the hazard is livestock and wildlife rather than traffic. The FCDO records good tarmac covering most of the country but says driving outside the major urban areas CAN BE DANGEROUS DUE TO STRAY WILDLIFE AND LIVESTOCK, A PARTICULAR RISK AT NIGHT, and that speeding and drink-driving cause frequent and often fatal accidents. For remote travel it tells you to arrange transport and accommodation in advance, carry emergency supplies INCLUDING WATER AND FUEL, prepare for off-road conditions, and in very remote areas to TRAVEL IN CONVOY OR WITH A SATELLITE PHONE. The rainy season from November to March brings heavy rain and flash flooding that can make roads unsafe. Driving after dark between towns is the single thing to refuse.
Two more. Malaria is present in northern Botswana and the risk is highest in the rainy season from November to June, so this is a destination where antimalarial prophylaxis is a conversation to have with a travel clinic rather than an optional extra. And the dust in the dry season is constant and fine, which the packing list below takes seriously.
The Chobe Packing List
Warm merino, because the mornings are cold
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is the foundation of a Botswana safari list and the thing most visitors underestimate. A June or July game drive leaves before sunrise at five degrees in an open vehicle doing forty kilometres an hour, which is genuinely cold, and by eleven it is twenty-eight. Wool is the layer that handles both ends of that without being taken off and lost, and it survives several days of dust and sweat without a wash, which matters because lodge laundry takes a day. Neutral colours are the convention and the sense: greens, browns and greys rather than white, which shows dust instantly, or dark blue and black, which attract tsetse fly.
A proper insulating layer for the dry season
A Columbia Powder Lite insulated jacket, and a fleece under it in June and July. A pre-dawn boat cruise or game drive in a Botswana winter is the coldest thing in this batch, and lodges provide blankets and hot water bottles in the vehicles precisely because of it.
Something over your face for the dust
The dry-season tracks are fine powder and a vehicle in convoy drives through the cloud of the one ahead. A buff or a light scarf over nose and mouth is the single most useful small item here. We hold no neck gaiter entry with a confirmed product identity, so buy any scarf you like.
A hat that will not blow off
A wide brim UPF 50 sun hat with a chin cord, which is the operative detail in an open vehicle and on a boat.
Binoculars, which change the trip
Most of what you see is at a distance, and Chobe's bird list is over 450 species. A pair of binoculars turns a brown speck into a carmine bee-eater. Lodges sometimes lend them and frequently do not.
Warm socks and closed shoes
A pair of Darn Tough merino hiking socks for the cold mornings, and closed shoes rather than sandals: the vehicle floor is dusty, you may walk at a camp, and scorpions and thorns are real in the bush.
Water, and more than the lodge gives you
An insulated water bottle. A four-hour drive in dry heat with no shade dehydrates people badly and the mid-morning headache most first-timers get is exactly that.
Insect repellent, which here is a malaria measure
DEET insect repellent for exposed skin at dawn and dusk, and Sawyer permethrin treated on trousers and long sleeves before you travel, which is the proper answer in a malarial area and lasts several washes. Talk to a travel clinic about prophylaxis.
The small things
Pula in cash for tips and park fees, though lodges take cards. A head torch for the unlit paths between lodge buildings, which you will need and which is also why you accept the escort. Sunglasses. And a soft bag rather than a hard case if any part of your trip is a light aircraft, because the weight and shape limits are strict.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Note on the photographs: the two sunset frames on this page are the river and the Savuti plain, and the third is a pair of red-billed spurfowls rather than a famous predator. Chobe's lion and leopard sightings are real and frequent; the available imagery we can attribute to the park simply does not include them, and we would rather show you what we can stand behind than borrow a photograph of somewhere else.
Essential Resources for Women in Chobe
Emergency numbers: 999 is the general emergency number in Botswana, with 997 for ambulance, 998 for fire and 999 for police. In practice on a Chobe trip the first and most effective call is your lodge or guide, who has the radio and the vehicle, followed by the Kasane police station and the Department of Wildlife and National Parks office at the park gate, which is the authority inside the park. Botswana has no dedicated tourist police force. For violence against women, Botswana Gender Based Violence Prevention and Support Centre operates a national helpline, and the police have a dedicated unit.
US State Department travel advisory: the Botswana advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/botswana, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
Main hospital: Kasane has a primary hospital suited to ordinary problems and stabilisation. For anything serious the answer is an air evacuation, usually to Gaborone, Maun or across the border to South Africa, and the regional reality is that Johannesburg is where most serious safari cases from northern Botswana end up. That makes medical evacuation insurance non-negotiable on this trip rather than prudent: confirm in writing that your policy covers air evacuation from a remote area of Botswana and that it covers the activities you will do. Note that Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe is ninety minutes away and has a hospital, but crossing a border while injured adds complication rather than removing it. Ask your lodge what their evacuation arrangement is and who pays for the flight up front, which is the question that matters at the time.
Official health authority: the Botswana Ministry of Health and Wellness. MALARIA IS PRESENT in northern Botswana with the risk highest in the rainy season from November to June, so prophylaxis is a travel clinic conversation rather than an optional extra; note the health link here is the Ministry of Health and Wellness's own working domain rather than the government portal, which fails certificate verification
US Embassy: the United States Embassy in Gaborone.
Official tourism authority: the Botswana Tourism Organisation. Botswana Tourism Organisation was returning a server error when this post was written, so if the link does not resolve the Department of Wildlife and National Parks is the authority for park fees, gate times and the Savuti and Linyanti road conditions, which decide whether those sections are reachable at all
The FCDO names river-fronting lodges in the Chobe area for room break-ins. Lock your room even at dinner.
Accept the escort to your room after dark. Hippos leave the river to graze at night.
Solo women safety assessment: Chobe is a straightforward destination for a woman travelling alone because of its structure: you are in a lodge with staff, on guided drives and boats, and rarely walking anywhere by yourself. BOTSWANA CARRIES NO ADVISED-AGAINST AREAS ANYWHERE and the FCDO records that although there is no recent history of terrorism, attacks cannot be ruled out, which is the standard formulation for a country with no specific threat. ITS CRIME SECTION NAMES THIS PARK: attacks on tourists are rare but violent crime is increasing particularly in Gaborone, Francistown and Maun, and there have been ISOLATED ROOM BREAK-INS AND THEFT FROM LODGES IN THE CHOBE AREA, PARTICULARLY RIVER-FRONTING LODGES, which is the kind most visitors book. Lock your room whenever you leave it including at dinner, use the safe, and raise it with your operator if the accommodation does not seem secure. ON SEXUAL ASSAULT THE FCDO IS BLUNT AND SHORT: BOTSWANA HAS A HIGH NUMBER OF SEXUAL ASSAULTS, adding that while foreign visitors are unlikely to be targeted, women should take care when walking and avoid walking alone at night. That is a national figure with no named location or scenario, which makes it harder to act on than a specific pattern, so the general rules carry the weight: lodge transfers rather than walking after dark, a locked room, and a trip arranged through an operator, which on safari is normal anyway. THE WILDLIFE IS THE REAL DANGER AND THE FCDO SAYS SO. On open highways INSIDE OR OUTSIDE wildlife reserves there could be dangerous animals roaming that may behave unpredictably, so the fence is not the boundary of the risk. DO NOT BATHE IN RIVERS AND LAKES: you could be attacked by wild animals and risk water-borne disease, and the Chobe holds crocodiles and a large hippo population, with hippos killing more people in Africa than crocodiles. Lodges here are unfenced or partly fenced and elephants, buffalo and hippos walk through them; hippos leave the river to graze at night, which is why you are escorted to your room, so accept it every time. Follow park regulations and wardens. THE ROADS are the other hazard, with stray wildlife and livestock a particular risk at night, so do not drive between towns after dark, and for remote sections carry water and fuel and travel in convoy or with a satellite phone. MALARIA IS PRESENT in the north, highest November to June. MEDICAL EVACUATION INSURANCE IS NON-NEGOTIABLE: Kasane's hospital stabilises and anything serious is an air evacuation to Gaborone, Maun or South Africa. 999 for police, 997 for ambulance, and in practice your lodge and guide hold the radio.
Reading On
Chobe is usually part of a circuit rather than a trip on its own. The Okavango packing list covers the delta to the south-west, which is the other half of a Botswana safari and a completely different landscape, and the Gaborone packing list the capital. Across the border, the Victoria Falls packing list covers the falls ninety minutes east, which is the most common pairing with Chobe, and the Livingstone packing list the Zambian side. The Botswana travel guide for women and the Botswana packing list carry the country-level advice, including the malaria geography and the wildlife rules. For why wool is the layer for a five-degree dawn and a twenty-eight-degree noon in the same vehicle, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
