Okavango Elephant Crossing — Botswana

Each year during the summer flood season, the Okavango Delta's rising waters force elephant herds of 50 to 200 animals to swim between islands, creating one of Africa's most dramatic wildlife spectacles as entire family groups — from ancient matriarchs to week-old calves — cross deep channels with only their trunks and the tops of their heads visible above the water surface, the calves sometimes lifted bodily by their mothers in the swift current. The Okavango's mokoro boat system allows silent approach within metres of swimming elephants — the animals unhurried and unthreatened by the traditional dugout canoes — creating an intimacy of encounter with the world's largest land animal that is impossible in any land-based game vehicle. The delta's extraordinary visual quality — clear water channels, papyrus-fringed islands, and the deep sky of the Kalahari reflected in still backwaters — frames the elephant crossings in a landscape of serene African beauty entirely unlike the dusty savannah encounters of other parks. The Okavango floods peak between June and August when the rains that fell in Angola months earlier finally reach Botswana, and the height of the flood coincides with winter's cold clear weather to create the most comfortable and wildlife-rich conditions. Hippo, sitatunga antelope, and African fish eagles complete a water-focused wildlife experience of extraordinary richness.