Nxai Pan National Park

Nxai Pan National Park lies immediately north of the Makgadikgadi Pans, sharing the same ancient lake basin geology but offering a distinctly different wildlife experience. The park centres on Nxai Pan itself — a large, grassy fossil pan ringed by acacia and mopane woodland — along with a network of smaller pans including Kgama-Kgama Pan and South Pan.

During the dry season the pans appear sparse and quiet. But when the rains arrive (November to April), the transformation is dramatic: the grasslands turn vivid green, and the park hosts one of Botswana's most spectacular wildlife concentrations. Thousands of springbok give birth on the open pans — one of southern Africa's most abundant ungulate calving events — attracting lions, cheetahs, leopards, and spotted hyenas in pursuit of easy prey.

Nxai Pan is one of the best parks in Botswana for cheetah sightings. The open, flat terrain gives these elegant cats an ideal environment for high-speed hunting, and several cheetahs are regularly spotted on the pans. The park also supports healthy populations of giraffe, elephant, gemsbok, and eland, as well as bat-eared foxes and the secretive brown hyena.

The park's most celebrated landmark is Baines' Baobabs — a cluster of seven ancient baobab trees, some estimated to be over 4,000 years old, painted by the explorer Thomas Baines in 1862. These iconic trees remain virtually unchanged from Baines' original paintings, offering one of Africa's most historically evocative landscape photography subjects. The site is only accessible with a 4WD.