Botswana Travel Forum

I'm leaving for Africa trip in 10 days (Botswana Namibia, and South Africa for 2 months), and am finally starting to decide on the specific itineraries (I know, very late).

The one thing that made me worried when I was reading the guidebook was it looks like some of the safaris require camp-site reservations well in advance. I'm planning to pitch my own tent at each safari (and probably avoid most of the safaris where I cannot for a budget reason), and my previous impression was that you don't need well-advanced reservations for doing so.

However it looks like that's not true at least for the safaris in Botswana (Chobe and Moremi). How well in advance do you think I need to make them for those safaris? I usually don't like setting up fixed dates to go to certain places when I travel (except having rough ideas), and I'd rather not do that if I don't have to, but it seems like you don't have a choice for certain safaris.

Also are there other safaris in the above three countries, where I'd need to make reservations for camping (meaning pitching my own tent) well in advance? It doesn't look like I have to for Krugers, but I'm not sure about others.

Thank you for your advice.

Like other countries, if you are on a budget trip and just pitching up, most places need no reservations. If you are self driving, the parks require reservations- see http://maunselfdrive4x4.webs.com/dwnpreservations.htm

Lots of options on places to camp also, and mostly don't need reservations- this is a great website:
http://maunselfdrive4x4.webs.com/campsitesaccomodations.htm