Tsodilo Hills - Botswana

Like Kubo we had long known about Tsodilo but had never had the opportunity to go there and like Kubo it had the reputation as a place which stays in the memory long after you leave. 

Situated in the North West of Botswana and to the west of the Okavango Delta the hills have for thousands of years been of special spiritual significance to the San Bushman who call Tsodilo     ' Mountain Of The God'.

From Maun it takes around six hours to reach the hills, the road follows the western side of the Okavango Delta to Shakawe and eventually onto the border with Namibia at Mohembo. It had the reputation of being a very bad road but now is excellent tar all the way until you reach the turnoff to Tsodilo where you hit dirt.

Tsodilo consists of three hills known by the Bushmen as the Male, Female and The Child. Containing possibly the finest collection of bushman rock art in Africa, the first one you come to is the Male, which is the largest, next is the Female and some way away is the Child. According to bushman legend they were once a family but the female left the Male taking the child with her and when the Child tried to return to her Father she became lost in the bush.

Tsodilo does not have national park or reserve status so whilst you pay a small fee to enter camping is free, which is almost unique in this day and age. There are two campsites, the main one near to the park headquarters is nice, situated under large trees but in our opinion the nicest if you can get to it is Malatso which is further into the bush situated at the foot of the Female. The site is not large and should only take one party at a time so if you do manage to get there first then you can enjoy a real bush experience made even more atmospheric by the hundreds of years of bushman involvement in the area as shown by some rock paintings close by.

The majority and best of the paintings are said to be on the Female, researchers are still finding new paintings in the more inaccessible places so no one really knows how many there are in total. There are a number of walks where you can view a lot of the art and also walk from one side of the hill to the other.

It's possible to self guide but it's far better to take one of the local guides as he will point out things you would miss on your own. Our guide was an old boy called Prak who spoke no English but who we still managed to converse with the help of sign language. Apart showing us the paintings Prak gave us a more intimate feel for the place such as when he pointed out the Marula tree which he fell out of as a young boy knocking out all his front teeth (which he delighted in showing us!) and the small cave where a Leopard regularly hangs out.

Looking at the paintings it sobering to see many depict animals that are now long gone from the area, so they  really are an echo of the past. The bushman are now almost absorbed into the other larger local tribe called the Humbukushu and it's sad to see what is becoming of them in places like the Central Kalahari, where they are being pushed even further to the margin of society. Laurens Van De Post, (Prince Charles mentor), loved Tsodilo and fought all his life to try to preserve and protect the Bushman culture but I fear it's a battle that is being lost as the world becomes ever more obsessed with self and overpowered by technology. Visit the small museum at the headquarters and read some of the quotes from the locals and other Motswana from further afield to see how Africans see the world changing.

Having said all this there is still some game in the area and certainly we saw evidence that Elephants had been through a while back but talking to the locals animals such as Lion have not been seen for generations and our guess is you would be lucky to see anything other than the odd antelope nowadays. Even birdlife which, with all the trees, we expected to be prolific was quite scarce and what we saw was very subdued which in a way added to the eeriness of the place.

We stayed four nights at Tsodilo exploring the area and generally chilling out, in all that time apart from driving back to the headquarters to pick up Prak we saw and heard no other human beings. There is water at the headquarters but that had run out when we visited so you will need to bring everything with you for your stay but providing you are properly equipped then you can enjoy one of the last few places in the world where you can be on your own apart from of course the ghosts of the past - but go before it becomes too late.

The last night at Tsodilo it blew a gale which was so strong we could feel Rupert rocking backwards and forwards, the next morning was sunny but very cold, not unexpected as we were now right in the middle of winter. Before returning to Maun we decided to drive on 40 miles or so towards the Namibian border to take a look at a place called Drotsky's Cabins. Drotsky was an old Afrikaner farmer who in the 1920s brought to the worlds attention some spectacular caves in Namibia, Drotsky's Caves are now one of Namibia's tourist attractions.

His descendents now own and run Drotsky's Cabins on the edge of the Okavango Delta. Drotsky's mainly caters to anglers who go there to catch Tiger Fish but it also does trips into the swamps for game drives and birding.  Our main reason for visiting was to check out their campsite as next year we will drive through to Namibia this way and Drotsky's could make a good stopover. We found the lodge and cabins in a lovely setting overlooking the Okavango Delta but as so often happens the campsite was disappointing set well back in the bush however it would serve as an overnight stop if needed.

We arrived back in Maun in the late afternoon just in time to check out emails where we found problems were growing with our tenants not paying the rent - not what you need when your thousands of miles away and out of communication for long periods.