Makgadikgadi Pans

Makgadikgadi Pans National Park was established in 1992 in north-eastern Botswana and protects some 4,900 km² on the western edge of the salt pan complex of the same name.

The Makgadikgadi are the dry bed of a prehistoric lake that once covered much of northern Botswana and that dried out when the rivers feeding it were diverted by tectonic movements. What remains is a surface of salt and clay tens of thousands of square kilometres across, dazzling and practically empty during the dry season, with no visual reference points and no vegetation, one of the most desolate landscapes on the continent.

After the rains everything changes: the pans flood, grass appears around their edges and large concentrations of lesser and greater flamingos arrive to breed, along with pelicans and waterbirds. That cycle also triggers the migration of Burchell's zebra between the Boteti River and the pan grasslands, the second largest terrestrial mammal migration in Africa after that of the Serengeti, and one of the least noticed. The park also preserves historic baobabs, among them Baines' Baobabs, painted by the artist Thomas Baines in 1862.