Linyanti Floodplains

Part of the grand and gorgeous Okavango Delta ecosystem, up in the northwest part of Chobe National Park the Linyanti marshlands are extraordinarily rich in diverse wildlife, especially Kalahari elephants, who remind us of something the great Peter Matthiessen once wrote about how he “could watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time…there is a great mystery behind that masked grey visage, an ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea.”

Along with those unforgettable elephants, Linyanti’s marshes and forests are home to lions, leopards, roan and sable antelopes, hippos, crocodiles, wild dogs (“there is nothing so enthusiastic as a wild dog,” writes Rosie Woodfroffe of the London’s Institute of Zoology), and an astounding cast of avians, including fishing owls, kingfishers, acrobatic, gaily coloured rollers, and spindly strands of storks.