Travelling in Botswana with kids
Botswana is educational, interactive, and its well-equipped lodges offer family tents, activities and safe areas for children. However, check with your operator before travelling in Botswana with kids – and be sure to let them know how old your children are. Eight year olds can sometimes go on standard game drives, but bush walks and many water-based activities are only suitable for those aged 10 or even 12.
Realistically the older the child is, the more they will get out of travelling in Botswana.![]()
Drives are long, hot and uncomfortable, and game viewing requires patience and silence – not skills younger children are likely to possess. Teenagers, however, can have a thrilling time, and you can travel during the school holidays – Apr-Nov are the best months to see wildlife. With any luck they’ll be too distracted to realise there's no mobile phone signal or Internet!
Botswana family Safari with teenagers holiday
See some of the world’s greatest waterfalls and wildlife
From
£1506 to £1835
10 days
ex flights
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Botswana luxury family safari
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Botswana family adventure
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Family activities
Mini Ray Mears will enjoy taking a bushwalk with the San in the Kalahari. They can discover how to get water in the desert, what to eat, how to trap small animals and how to make fire – it’s an absolutely brilliant, real-life survival course.
Louise de Waal, from our supplier Baobab Travel: “Some lodges offer special 'bush school' programmes for children. Guides are experienced in working with kids, and will show them how to recognise the spoor – tracks and droppings – as well as plants and small creatures. It’s fun, very hands-on – and totally safe. Plus it gives parents the chance to enjoy their own game drives.”
Land-based game drives, can be hot, dusty and uncomfortable, especially if wildlife is scarce. River cruises in Chobe National Park are a safe, fun way to see wildlife up close, including hippos, crocodiles and elephants – and the boat is a far more comfortable means of transport for wriggly, impatient explorers.
Our top trip
Botswana family Safari with teenagers holiday
See some of the world’s greatest waterfalls and wildlife
From
£1506 to £1835
10 days
ex flights
Small group travel:
2023: 30 Dec
2024: 3 Apr, 29 Jun, 6 Jul, 13 Jul, 20 Jul, 27 Jul, 31 Jul, 4 Aug, 11 Aug, 18 Aug, 8 Sep, 22 Sep, 29 Sep, 21 Dec, 27 Dec, 30 Dec
2023: 30 Dec
2024: 3 Apr, 29 Jun, 6 Jul, 13 Jul, 20 Jul, 27 Jul, 31 Jul, 4 Aug, 11 Aug, 18 Aug, 8 Sep, 22 Sep, 29 Sep, 21 Dec, 27 Dec, 30 Dec
Travel Team
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Botswana travel advice for families
Arabella is a Botswana specialist for our supplier, Natural World Safaris. She has been to the country three times - here she shares her tips for those travelling in Botswana with kids:
“Make sure you book with an operator that has experience with family tours, as some camps have family facilities but no dedicated programmes. Others have guides who are trained to work with children, and there are safe walks around the camp. In the evening there are books they can colour in, and they can even help cook camp meals with the chef. It’s the best outdoors education they can get.”
“Make sure you book with an operator that has experience with family tours, as some camps have family facilities but no dedicated programmes. Others have guides who are trained to work with children, and there are safe walks around the camp. In the evening there are books they can colour in, and they can even help cook camp meals with the chef. It’s the best outdoors education they can get.”
Richard Madden, author of The Telegraph’s Bush Telegraph column:
“Think carefully before travelling in Botswana with children.You should accurately assess whether your children are old enough to fully appreciate the experience. While some will be enchanted on each and every game drive, others lose interest very quickly. A bored and fractious child is not what you want when you’ve paid so much for the holiday of a lifetime.”
“Think carefully before travelling in Botswana with children.You should accurately assess whether your children are old enough to fully appreciate the experience. While some will be enchanted on each and every game drive, others lose interest very quickly. A bored and fractious child is not what you want when you’ve paid so much for the holiday of a lifetime.”
More Botswana articles
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There are of course myriad things to do in Botswana, from a mokoro canoe ride in the Delta to bush walks and an authentic San experience in the Kalahari.
Carrying water and silt from the Angolan highlands, Botswana’s Okavango Delta floods life into the Kalahari Desert and supports wildlife on an epic scale.
Botswana’s Moremi Game Reserve offers what is arguably some of the finest game viewing in southern Africa, in one of the continent’s richest and most diverse ecosystems.
Discover the diverse and fascinating wildlife roaming through one of Africa’s last great wildernesses on a Botswana safari.
The chance to see a vast array of Botswana wildlife hunting, feeding and raising young in some of Africa’s most unspoilt, pristine environments is what draws people to this desert nation.
Botswana is an exclusive destination with exclusive accommodation – often small, always perfectly formed and frequently at the forefront of responsible tourism.
We really rate travel advice from our friends in Botswana and think you should too; read pearls of wisdom from expert travel writers, photographers and fellow travellers, too.
Learn about Botswana's responsible tourism issues, from hunting bans to the San people, is an important part of travelling right in Botswana and finding out what you can do to help.
