Savuti Camp, Linyanti, Botswana

Savuti Camp is situated in the Linyanti Reserve along the Savuti Channel in northern Botswana. The camp is built about 17 kilometres "downstream" from the source of the Savuti. The channel stopped flowing in 1980 and what was a Hippo-filled river, is now wide, open grasslands.

Savuti Camp is a comfortable camp providing accommodation in 7 large walk-in tented rooms with en-suite facilities. Five of the bathrooms are within the tents and two tents have bathrooms with wonderful open fronts facing onto the Savuti Channel.

Each room is raised off the ground on wooden decks. The camp has a thatched dining area, pub and plunge pool, all on raised wooden decks. There is a waterhole close to camp and this attracts large numbers of animals that guests can view from the camp.

Activities include game drives in open 4x4 Land Rovers, hides, night drives and walks with an armed guard. Game in the area includes all of Botswana's big game, and is one of the best areas in the country to see predators. There are also good concentrations of plains game in the area.

Game Viewing Details:
Elephants are one of the reserves prime attractions - especially in our winter months when they are forced to congregate along the waterways and around the waterholes of the area when the rainfall filled depressions and pans of the interior dry up. At times the reserve must have several thousand elephants roaming around.

Red Lechwe, Zebra, Wildebeest, Impala, Waterbuck, Sable, Roan, Eland, Giraffe, Baboon, Monkey, Warthog, Crocodile and Buffalo are some of the other animals to be found here. Then there are the predators - Lion, Leopard, Cheetah, Wild Dog and Hyena - and the nocturnal animals - Bushbabies, Spring Hare, Aardwolf, Serval, Genet, Pangolin - and the smaller predators.

Birding is great here - from the Okavango "specials", such as Slaty Egret, Whiterumped Babblers and Wattled Cranes, to the bushveld species.

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The Linyanti Wildlife Reserve
The Linyanti Wildlife Reserve consists of 125,000 hectares of pristine wildlife area. It is bordered by the Linyanti River in the north and the Chobe National Park in the east. Across the Linyanti River northwards lies Namibia's Caprivi strip. Two thirds of the Savuti channel is situated within the reserve. This area is very different from the Okavango Delta and should be included in every Botswana safari itinerary so that travellers have a more complete and varied experience of the country's different wildlife areas. This private reserve is enormous and is one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of Botswana. The region is one of the least visited and most pristine corners of Botswana and the concession owners intend to keep it this way. The Linyanti region is shared between a very small number of private camps, ensuring that guests are able to view the abundant wildlife privately and exclusively.

Renowned Wildlife Area
The Linyanti region in the dry season (June through October) has the range of much of Chobe's wildlife, and huge concentrations of migratory species such as Zebra and Elephant can be seen. The Linyanti area is also renowned for its predators, particularly lions and hyenas. Derek and Beverly Joubert made this region famous in their National Geographic films ("Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hyenas", "Zebras: Patterns in the Grass", "Lions of Darkness", "Wildlife Warriors" and others). The Linyanti has a wonderful diversity of habitat that makes it a haven for wildlife. There are open grasslands and waterholes along the Savuti channel and along the Linyanti river. Inland are spectacular mature woodlands - towering mopane and leadwood forests which is where one will find the massive herds of elephant in the winter months.

The Linyanti's waters weave and meander as they make their way eastward towards Chobe and along its way form a myriad of pools and lagoons which are favored by Hippos, Crocodiles and incredible birdlife. These pools also attract game from the dry lands to the east, for out of the rainy season they hold the first permanent waters to be found. In the early evening, with youngsters in tow, several breeding herds of Elephant usually gather at the pools along the Linyanti to enjoy a drink and to wallow and frolic in the mudholes.

As mentioned, this area abounds with Lion and Elephant, but there are large concentrations of Buffalo and antelopes such as Red Lechwe, Tsessebe, Impala and Kudu. The less seen species such as Sable Antelope and Roan Antelope are also regularly encountered in this area. The Linyanti also has high concentrations of Giraffe, which love to feed on the abundant acacia trees along the floodplains, while Cheetahs find the open areas of the Savuti channel perfect for running down their prey.

The Savuti Channel
The Savuti channel is a now dry "waterway" that connects the Linyanti River (from the Zibadianja lagoon) with the interior of the Chobe National Park, ending at the Savuti marsh. The Savuti has only ever flowed intermittently; it last flowed from 1967 to 1981, but since then it and the associated marsh have been dry, a phenomenon that has occurred on and off over the centuries. Today the channel is an open grassland and is home to numerous animals including large herds of Zebra, Impala and Wildebeests, as well as abundant predators such as Lion, Cheetah and Wild Dog. Gaunt skeletons of the trees, now long-dead, that grew in some earlier dry period line both the channel and the marsh. These trees would have had at least 50 years of dry conditions in which to grow and mature into the size they reached before drowning during the subsequent flood.

Records show that the Savuti channel and the marsh dried out during the 1880's, probably completely by 1888. The channel then remained dry until summer 1957-58 when heavy rains in the catchment area of the Angolan highlands reflooded the Chobe river system and the channel flowed once again. The channel continued to flow until 1966 when it again dried up, temporarily though, as it flowed again the next year. This wet cycle lasted until 1981, when the channel stopped flowing and began to dry up again completely. This occurrence (including the fate of the animals which lived in and depended on the channels waters) is chronicled in Derek and Beverly Joubert's documentary film, "The Stolen River".

This cyclical and changing feature of wet and dry in the channel is not completely understood, but it is generally believed that tectonic activity deep below the Kalahari's sandbed, is responsible. Others argue that its flow is primarily dependent upon the rainfall in the Angolan highlands which feeds the Okavango and Chobe river basins and the channel.

The Selinda Spillway
The Selinda (or Magweqana) Spillway is a shallow channel connecting the Panhandle region of the Okavango Delta with the Chobe River system. The Spillway flows only in years of high waters. Contrary to popular belief, the Spillway flows only in one direction, from the Okavango to the Chobe. Legend has it that it flows in either direction depending upon water levels in the two systems, but this is not likely as the Okavango side is 30 metres higher than on the Chobe/Linyanti side.