11: Top Gear Revisited!

It'a over 200km from Maun and the Okavango Delta to our next destination in the Ntwetwe Pan National Park. The road is pretty good - areas of deep and vicious potholes notwithstanding - and we make quick progress.

We're staying for a few nights at a funky place - Planet Baobab - which is signposted from the road by a massive pink aardvark and a baobab tree made of metal. There’s a rather nice bar built into a baobab tree and a pool, which is a bonus!

We set up camp and settle down to veg curry cooked by Janet and enjoy an evening chatting around the camp fire.

When the alarm goes off at 5.15 a.m. we curse our decision to go on a guided drive. We’re off to track down a family of meerkats and also visit the Pans. We wrap up against the early morning chill and we're glad we have as hurtling along in an open-sided safari vehicle, it's absolutely freezing.

It's a long drive during which we get to admire the sunrise but the landscape is flat and unvarying so it's not the best - but seeing the meerkats is we hope, going to be great fun.

We arrive before the Meerkats are up; there is a chap whose job it is to stay with them and track them which is just as well - imagine driving for two hours only to be unable to find them!

The Meerkats live completely wild but they are what they call habituated i.e. they are used to and unafraid of humans. They are completely unfazed by our presence.

As the Meerkats aren't up when we arrive, we enjoy a bush breakfast. Slowly they begin to drag themselves out of bed - a bit like teenagers!

They stand facing the sun to warm up for a while before getting on with their day.

They like to have a vantage point from which to look for danger, so it's possible to lie down and they may climb on you. The only one of us they like is Janet and she is inundated with little furry friends - we label her the Meerkat Whisperer!

We follow the Meerkats for a while as they start to dig for grubs and bugs, some of them digging really quite deep; it's amazing that they can smell food so relatively deep below the surface.

We head on and drive briefly onto the Makgadikgadi Pans. Once a massive lake fed from the Okavango Delta, but now dried up and forming a huge network of salt pans.

The Pans found TV fame in 2007 on Top Gear when Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May drove across them in adapted two-wheel-drive cars. They returned more recently when they re-traced their journey in the 2023 Grand Tour Finale.

The place is unreal! As far as the eye can see there is a flat, apparently lifeless, expanse of nothingness, the name itself - Makgadikgadi - means 'vast lifeless land'. We've never seen anything like this other than in books and on TV.

Our guide tells us that far from being lifeless there's a lot going on in and around the Pans including seeds and reptile eggs which lie dormant waiting for the rains to signal for them to spring into life.

We drive back to camp and the whole area starts to come alive, not with wild animals but with hundreds of horses and cows roaming freely. They are apparently owned by local farmers and just left to roam free during the day. We are told that they return home at night of their own accord which seems unlikely but is presumably true.

Today should be really exciting. We're going to be re-tracing the Top Gear team’s steps... or tyre marks!

With a slightly nerve wracking drive ahead, the plan is to navigate across the salt pans to a magical place called Kubu Island - but more about that later.

As there has been unusually high rainfall this wet season, there is a danger that although the Pans look dry, lurking just beneath the fragile crust could be deep and sticky mud which once you get stuck in is really difficult to get out of and vehicles have been known to disappear completely!

As we have found with other potentially difficult drives, there are differing opinions on whether we should do it. We decide to take the advice of a man at the camp who has just done the crossing in reverse and he says it’s fine as long as you don't stray from the tracks.

The Makgadikgadi Pan along with the Nxai Pan is the largest salt flat complex in the world; rather than consisting of one pan, it is made up of a network of pans which together are about the size of Switzerland! This area was once a huge lake fed by the Zambezi, the Chobe and the Okavango rivers but it began evaporating millennia ago.

The Pans do hold water in the rainy season when they come alive with flamingos, myriad other birds and animals - at other times they are known for their desolate beauty.

Our destination is one that has earned renown after being visited by the Top Gear team - Kubu Island (or Lekhubu as it’s also known). The entire island is a national monument and is considered a sacred site by the indigenous people of the area. 

Kudu Island is a granite rock outcrop in the middle of the Pans populated by huge Baobab trees - the rocks are estimated to be around two billion years old and some of the Baobab trees are over two thousand years - mind blowing!

There is no campsite as such here, just a few clearings at the bottom of the rocks where you can stay, there are no facilities, just a few long-drop toilets and you have to be completely self-sufficient.

What a place this is, it is very remote taking several hours to reach from any direction and as there are so few people here (the campsite is almost empty) the peace is total.

None of us has ever been anywhere like this and it’s easy to see why it is considered sacred - it even caused Jeremy Clarkson to stare in silent awe.

Being here really brings home to us what a fleeting and essentially insignificant moment we occupy in the history of our planet, it’s a humbling experience.

We can imagine that if the weather weren’t sunny and warm then this place would be bleak as it’s been described in much of the literature that we’ve read but for us it is utterly exquisite. The rocks, which are variously pink, brown and green are magnificent; the baobab trees are wondrous and the Pan is glorious.

It’s like being on the coast, the Pan is like the beach and in the distance the mirage makes you think you’re seeing vast expanses of blue water.

We have seen some great night skies during our time on this wonderful continent but we'd be lying if we said we'd seen anything that comes close to the shimmering splendour laid on for us here.

The Milky Way is clearly visible as it traverses the universe and the rest of the sky is literally teeming with stars. We sit back and gaze in wonder.

Nick puts his photographic skills to the test and takes some amazing, experimental, timelapse photographs which involves leaving the camera outside all night and hoping it doesn't get knocked over by animals or pinched!

We spend two nights on the Island, walking and enjoying the scenery. Watching the sun setting and rising is a highlight.

When the sun rises it seems to slip quietly above the horizon and gradually casts a gentle light across the land whereas when it sets it does so with great fanfare and the sky is painted in vivid oranges, reds and pinks.

The silence is total, that is except when some wealthy tourists fly in on helicopters to spend half an hour or so marvelling at the wonders of this place - we in our humble tents feel that we have by far the better deal as we are able to spend time here and just drink in the atmosphere. If you ever get a chance to visit this place - take it, don’t hesitate, you won’t regret it.

Kubu Island is perhaps our last really special destination as we are now turning for home and the places where we will be staying from now on are selected for being en route back to Namibia and Walvis Bay. It feels sad to be coming to the end of our journey but you never know, there may still be adventures to be had… tune into our final blog of this trip next week!