3,2,1 and our sabbatical starts!
We knew that we wanted to plan as little as possible – but as much as necessary – long before we started the journey. The path is the destination, and we want to surrender to the flow of life. Sounds kind of pathetic, but it fits our idea of a sabbatical.
Planning an approximate routing has taken about three months in total. We will spend pretty much two months in Namibia and explore the country clockwise – starting in Windhoek. The focus is on landscapes, the colors and the desert. We will skip the Kalahari in the form of the KTP – we will visit the park in March from Botswana. We will spend most of our time in the Namib, the Kaokoveld and the Caprivi Strip and will leave the country there towards Botswana.
Pre-book or travel spontaneously?
The only pre-booked place in Namibia is the Fish River Lodge, two days after the start of our trip. The lodge is built on the edge of the canyon and offers this view and access to the canyon as a unique selling point. We booked one night there and join the canyon drive the next morning. All the rest of the time we are completely free and unbound in Namibia.
In Botswana, everything is different for us. We have booked to participate in a Trails Guide Course from EcoTraining here starting in early January 2019. We join a group that is doing a twelve-month field guide training. Furthermore, we will be accompanying this group for four weeks and will be moving around the bush mostly on foot. The course will take place in the Mashatu Game Reserve in the Tuli Block – this area is characterized by high cat abundance and many elephants – perfect for encounters on foot *haha
Out in the bush!
After that, we will spend about six weeks in the country and move almost exclusively in the wilderness (Central Kalahari, Makgadikgadi Pan, Nxai Pan and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park). Since the number of campsites is quite limited, we have decided to book this part of the trip to be able to visit all regions.
These 10 weeks will probably be the “wildest” of our trip and the ones where we will be for us most of the time.
The visit of South Africa will be limited to the Limpopo region. We plan to visit Marakele NP, northern Kruger NP and Mapungubwe NP. After +/- three weeks we decide what to do next. We would like to visit Zimbabwe. It depends on how the current situation will be.
Actually, we don’t know where we will be for the last two month. We are excited to see how our sabbatical will be!