Botswana's Mabuasehube 4x4 Trail

Getaway Magazine

Following the red Kalahari sand through the wild and wonderful Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.

"I’m sitting on top of my bakkie, staring out across Mpayathutlwa Pan. The name means ‘the stomach of the giraffe’ in Setswana, and from this vantage point the pan does look a bit like a stomach – long and oval, with a tapering curl that disappears behind the knot of camel thorn trees to my right.

I assume the name derives from the shape. When my friends and I asked the smiling official at the Mabuasehube Gate, he’d chuckled and nodded – apparently the translation was right, but I don’t think he was giving me his full attention. The sound of our engines had summoned him back from his lunch and the hot, deserted gatehouse wasn’t somewhere any of us wanted to be. In no time at all he waved us through. There were no computers to consult or online forms to fill in – just a huge, battered ledger showing the handful of vehicles that had passed through the border over the past few days. The Botswanan side of Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is like that: quiet and easy going, with only the most common sense of rules and plenty of time to sit, and think, and take in the views."

Extract from Magic in Mabuasehube, Getaway magazine, August 2014. —