Red eye

Overnight travel, but very much worth it. I am heading to Botswana for the first time since 2008. Pre-blip life feels like an aching gulf in my memory bank.

My itinerary entailed leaving Dar es Salaam in the middle of the night and arriving in Johannesburg at around 6am. The destination was Kasane in northern Botswana where a group of partners and colleagues from all over the Southern Africa region are convening for the annual network meeting on transfrontier conservation.

I came to Kasane a few times in my previous existence as a tour/expedition leader as it’s a hub for safari-going in Botswana. After 16 years it was exciting to approach by air and appreciate the vastness of the landscape. The conservation areas surrounding Kasane form part of the gigantic Kavango-Zambezi (KAZA) Transfrontier Conservation Area, one of the world’s foremost examples of conservation cooperation between states, and therefore a suitable location for this year’s meeting.

Chobe National Park in Botswana is known as the protected area with by far the largest number of elephants, at around 120,000, some clusters of which I could spot from the air. The wider KAZA has around double this number, which is easily the most of any contiguous ecosystem and represents over half of the total of African elephants.

I located my guesthouse in Kasane town, and went for a short walk. Warthogs scampered around like stray dogs. Kasane would be a dusty strip without the tourist industry bringing some revenue, especially at a time of drought like this. After no sleep, I felt compelled to do the unthinkable and buy a tooth-rotting energy drink. Whilst I walked a dust storm whipped up, the wind howled and a few splotches of rain fell. The deluge never arrived and the dust settled and persisted.

There was a group welcome dinner involving some talks and some traditional fare from Botswana. And then a welcome retreat to bed to catch up on sleep.