Imagine a smattering of billowing white tents, shaded by desert palms and surrounded by a thousand acres of shimmering, sparkling nothingness. You’ve just dreamt up San Camp, our impossibly romantic, seven-bedroom camp on the edge of the Nwetwe Pan in Botswana’s Makgadikgadi. San isn’t a place for frills and fluffiness. The magic is in the minimalism, both at the camp and in the mysterious desert landscape. You can forget the tourist crowds and over-stuffed 4x4s too; it’s just you, the wildlife, and a handful of local San Bushmen, waiting to share their secrets with you.

Of all the Makgadikgadi pans, we think Nwetwe is the most iconic. Meerkats pop up from the desert dust, brown hyaena hide in the grass, and you’ll see red hartebeest, springbok and gemsbok scurrying between them. But San Camp isn’t just about wildlife-watching – it’s about the atmosphere and the ethereal surroundings. Disappear into a remote world, a million miles from glowing screens and fruit-themed devices, where the 360-degree panoramas are so vast, you can see the curvature of the earth…

San Camp is seasonal, and operates during Botswana’s dry season from mid-April to mid-October. These months are the only time that the Ntwetwe Pan is accessible. When the rains begin to fall, the pans morph in to a totally different place, and although they are magnificent to look at, the rain makes for rather a dangerous adventure! If you would like to travel during the green season (November to March), consider Jack’s Camp, a year-round property also on the Makgadikgadi Pans.

Ntwetwe Pan changes softly and subtly as the dry season rolls on. Pools evaporate, whiteness dominates, and the baobabs seem even more striking. The predictable weather allows us to offer our activities on an unpredictable land, and you can quad bike across the lunar-like expanse, meet the meerkats, interact with a group of Zu/’hoasi Bushmen, and lie out on the pans and count the stars from horizon to horizon. As the land becomes drier, the permanent water sources and waterholes around San Camp are an important refuge for wildlife and although it can seem like a landscape of nothingness, the wildlife is never far away.