Makgadikgadi Pans

These large salt pans in the middle of the dry savanna of north eastern Botswana are one of the country’s most unique landscapes. They cover an area of approximately 16,000km2 in the Kalahari basin and form the bed of the ancient Lake Makgadikgadi that began evaporating thousands of years ago. The pans are salty desert whose only plant life is a thin layer of blue-green algae. The fringes of the pans are however salt marshes, and further afield are grassland and shrubby savanna. The pans fill with water and attract thousands of flamingoes, and a diversity of migratory birds. The fresh grasses also attract southern Africa’s last remaining migration of zebras and wildebeests.