Botswana is one of Africa’s last great wildernesses. The preservation of ancient migration routes – free from fences and farmland – have created a significant wildlife haven, and created space for one of Africa’s greatest wildlife spectacles: over 130,000 elephants, more than anywhere else in the world. The sheer quantity of wildlife here increases the chance of spotting once-in-a-lifetime scenes, including lions paddling across rivers or hunting thundering herds of Cape buffalo. Bring your zoom lens – and a sense of adventure.

But it’s worth tearing yourself away to spend some of your Botswana holiday discovering its culture. The San are the Kalahari’s original inhabitants – and bushwalks reveal how this forbidding land has served as their pharmacy and pantry for millennia, but also how – while Botswana’s wildlife flourishes – its first people’s traditional, sustainable lifestyle may be withering.