10 Peaceful Experiences in Namibia & Botswana
To take advantage of one of our curated journeys to Namibia and Botswana is to be given the chance of finding those occasions of tranquillity when the scale, power, beauty and often utter silence of nature help us to approach serenity.
Stressed by the woes of the world streamed by the endless news cycle? Losing the battle to keep phones away from the family dinner table? Preoccupied with status on the treadmill of society? Anxious about what’s round the corner, or regretful of what’s past? Put it all into perspective by allowing us to guide you to some calm places and experiences in two wonderful countries.
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1. Officially Quiet in Namibia
In a world filled with noise and distraction, thoughtful travellers increasingly find themselves seeking places with genuine solitude and silence. One such place is NamibRand Nature Reserve, which was awarded Wilderness Quiet Park status in 2024; Africa’s first location in a very select worldwide club of just four recognised by Quiet Parks International.
At Wolwedans Dunes Lodge, there‘s no better way to experience something that’s rare in the world – total silence – by leaving the phone behind and just sitting in a remote location in the dunes. Perhaps at that moment, you might consider whether silence is the sound of nothing or whether it is the sound of everything; at least everything that matters.
2. Glide in a Mokoro Canoe
- Jerome K. Jerome
From water level, hushed and smooth, the experience of gliding through the waterways of Botswana’s Okavango Delta in a mokoro canoe is one of calm anticipation. You’re at eye-level with the wildlife of the water: perching reed frogs, wading red lechwe antelope, lily-hopping African jananas, and stalking wattled cranes.
Great places to have a mokoro safari include Duba Plains Camp or Selinda Camp in the Okavango region. In Namibia, the river running by Serra Cafema may be too deep for the pole of a mokoro canoe, but ask your guide to switch off the boat’s engine for a few minutes of that same calm experience.
3. The Patient Wisdom of Bushmen
- Douglas Adams
No one knows the value of silence more than the San bushmen, who have needed to listen to the rhythms of nature to adapt and survive in the challenging Kalahari environment for the last 200,000 years.
Going on a walking safari with a bushman may be largely a silent activity, but your guide will be tuning into the game and sensing where to hunt. Botswana and Namibia have the largest proportions of San people, and while these hunter-gatherers still only account for just over 2% of their populations, there are chances to walk with them in locations such as Camp Kalahari and Jack’s Camp in Botswana’s Makgadikgadi. If you want to see San rock art that’s more than 6,000 years old, then Onduli Ridge in Namibia is the place to go.
4. In Darkness, We See the Stars
Sound, when it dominates and disturbs, is noise. It distracts and obscures, and when it is gone, we perceive things that otherwise go unnoticed. The same is true for light, which interferes in its own ‘noisy’ way to blot out things of subtle detail, often in ways that are impossible to know until it isn’t there.
The cloudless skies of deserts, free from light pollution because they are quite literally ‘deserted’, are unlike anything you will see in the crowded mid latitudes.
There’s no better way to experience the feeling of infinity beneath the millions of stars of the African sky than to stay at Sossusvlei Desert Lodge, a place where their ‘Star Dunes Experience’ features an on-site observatory with state-of-the-art telescopes and stargazing skylights above the beds.
5. Life Lessons from Trees
- William Blake
If trees could talk, what would they say? Would the 1,300-year-old Chapman’s Baobab have said that it once sheltered David Livingstone as he camped in its shade? Such trees are silent sentinels to the comings and goings of us human travellers and Chapman’s Baobab is even more silent now, for it fell in 2016 to let others take their turn of being the notable giants of future generations. There are other candidates: one in northern Namibia, the Ombalantu baobab, has a hollow trunk that can accommodate more than 30 people.
And just as the rings of a tree show that they accumulate mass as they grow, so our memories build on each other and lie within us. Great adventures are part of our structure.
"One of my most memorable nights in Africa was when I slept out under the stars on the Makgadikgadi Pans. It was so quiet out there that I could hear the pulse in my own ears. These moments of utter peace are transformative, and when I help clients build their perfect itinerary, I'm always keen to enable these experiences."
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6. Float and Drift
- Marcus Aurelius
To ride in a balloon is to drift and accept that we ultimately cannot create or force the current of events but must ride along and adapt. We are limited in our choices; we cannot go completely against the flow, but we can ascend or descend, gaining new perspectives.
When you take to the air in a balloon over NamibRand Nature Reserve, the stark beauty of the landscape becomes even more apparent, and you see the patterns and structures that aren’t obvious from a terrestrial vantage point. It’s up here that you’ll see something magical too: the ‘fairy circles’ that still baffle geomorphologists.
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7. Rocks of Ages
- Alain de Botton
The timescale of a human life, or indeed the history of what we optimistically call civilisation, is a mere blink in comparison with the evolution of a landscape. Nothing makes this more apparent than staring into a gaping chasm and contemplating the length of time over which incremental forces of erosion have been operating.
With its elemental and extraordinary geological setting amid rounded boulders, one place to experience the Fish River Canyon from is Canyon Lodge. For the ultimate edge-of-the-rim location, there’s also Fish River Lodge, though it may not suit those without a head for heights.
8. Quiet Rides
- Albert Einstein
Walking may be the most grounding and peaceful way to explore, but to cover more territory in quiet ease, there are options such as bicycles, horses, and electric vehicles - each offering a low-impact way to experience the wild.
An e-bike, with its near-silent motor, is the perfect way of discovering remote landscapes normally reserved for four-wheel drives while not disturbing wildlife.
Many of the lodges and camps we partner with are embracing the possibilities of electric vehicles, which offer low-impact, hushed encounters. Chobe Game Lodge, for example, has three boats that are fully solar-powered in addition to an electric game vehicle.
And for a different kind of freedom, saddle up. Horses - powered by nature’s ultimate biofuel, grass - are instinctively accepted by animals as a fellow grazer, allowing for awesome close-up experiences.
9. Solitude, Family-Style
- Edward Abbey
We may love our kids more than life itself, but there are moments when we need a break from them, just to read a book, have a sleep in the shade, or indeed indulge in anything that can only be achieved in glorious solitude.
Right at the heart of the Okavango Delta, Seba has spacious family suites and staff who can keep the kids busy and active all day long, with you or without you. They’ll learn to fish, cook, track animals, paddle mokoro canoes; and even do some art and crafts. Having had some time to yourself, even just an hour or two, you’ll be all the happier to break your solitude and and make memories together again.
10. African Philosophy
- Alexander McCall Smith
Precious Ramotswe, the delightful and wise character at the centre of Alexander McCall Smith’s best-selling ‘Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ books, is full of nuggets of wisdom.
Our advice, then, is to take one of McCall Smith’s wonderful books with you to Botswana, or indeed anywhere, particularly when you are getting away from it all. Precious also said, ‘Great things may come from moments of nothingness.’
+1. Sleep of the Virtuous
– Sophocles
Watching the great fiery orb of the African sun as it sinks towards the horizon in a place of remote grandeur is an experience to inspire reflection. What have I seen today? What have I learned and what do I believe in? What really matters? What am I for? Even, what am I?
Such moments, so rare in the hectic Western world, are the opportunities that await at the end of the day in a place such as Botswana’s Makgadikgadi Pan. Venturing out from Jack’s Camp deep into a landscape where even the distraction of topography is removed, the world is simplified and pared back to the basics.
Shakespeare called sleep the ‘balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast’, for it is in sleep that we make sense of the world. We wake up having had our consultation with our own natural physician of the mind. When you’re blissfully tired after a day of adventure, deep and rejuvenating sleep doesn’t have to be separate from an awesome experience, as is shown at Dinaka. From a luxurious star bed perched above the Kalahari bush, the spectacle of the night and the following dawn will remind you that while nights are an ending of a day, they are also the start of the adventures of the next.
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Supporting local communities, conserving wildlife and preserving wild spaces are commitments that have been ingrained in the Journeysmiths business model for over thirty years.Supporting local communities, conserving wildlife and preserving wild spaces are commitments that have been ingrained in the Journeysmiths business model for over thirty years.
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