Kaelo Destinations has turned its attention to the on-foot side of its collection this September, as the walking season in Botswana's Northern Tuli Game Reserve moves through its strongest months. The company operates safari lodges, tented camps and private homes in eastern Botswana, together with an exclusive-use beach house on the Mozambican coast. September falls inside both the WalkMashatu walking window, which runs from March to October each year, and the reserve's peak season, which runs from 1 July to 31 October. For travellers who have already spent a season or two in a game vehicle, the guided trails, sunken photographic hides and fly-camp sleep-outs tend to be the part of the offering that changes how they think about the bush.

Walking the reserve instead of driving it

Guests staying at Mashatu can exchange one of their two daily game drives for a guided safari walk, which is a straightforward swap rather than a separate booking. Walking changes the scale of everything. Instead of covering ground, guests move slowly through mopane woodland and along riverbeds with an experienced ranger, reading spoor, insect tracks and the scent of wild herbs. It is the kind of detail a vehicle passes over. For visitors weighing up a Botswana safari against a busier, better-known reserve elsewhere in the region, the on-foot option is often the deciding factor.

WalkMashatu goes further again. Each trail takes a maximum of six guests, is led by an experienced guide and is routed according to the fitness levels and interests of the group. Night Under the Stars runs alongside it as an additional activity, available year-round to guests staying at the Mashatu lodges and at Kolokolo Safari Home. Guests leave their lodge on an afternoon game drive with an overnight bag, arrive at the WalkMashatu Fly Camp, and spend the evening around a fire with dinner, night photography, storytelling or a short guided walk. They sleep in custom designed tents under an open Botswana sky, then set out on a sunrise game drive back to the lodge for brunch the following morning.

Hides that put the camera at eye level

The reserve's two photographic hides sit underground, which is the whole point of them. At the Matebole Photographic Hide, guests sit at eye level while elephants, antelope and a long list of bird species come down to drink a few metres away. Sessions run morning or afternoon, take a maximum of nine people, and are guided by the PhotoMashatu team, who have more than a decade of experience in the hide and can supply equipment support such as gimbals. Beginners and seasoned photographers are handled the same way, with guidance pitched to the person holding the camera.

The Lala Limpopo Sleepout Hide, which Conde Nast Traveller has recognised as the world's most intrepid sleepover, works from dusk until dawn. It is a comfortable safari suite built into the ground with an active waterhole roughly two metres from the photographing window, fitted with lighting designed for night photography. Guests eat dinner, drink coffee and stay put, watching nocturnal wildlife through the night and waking to elephants at eye level. For anyone who has spent years photographing wildlife from a raised vehicle, the lowered angle is a genuinely different discipline. The PhotoMashatu vehicle carries the same idea into the field, with space for gear, fitted gimbal arms and a specially lowered floor for eye-level images.

Where guests actually stay

Kaelo Destinations groups its properties into three collections, which makes the range easier to read. The Luxury Collection holds Euphorbia Mashatu, a five-star property built in 2021 with eight private villas and the first of its kind in the region, alongside Kolokolo Safari Home, an exclusive-use house for eight that dates to the 1960s and was renovated in 2023, plus Pambele Beach House, La Grande Mare and the group's aviation services. The Safari Collection covers Mashatu Lodge, first built in the mid to late 1970s and taking between fourteen and twenty-eight guests, Tuli Safari Lodge Mashatu, the oldest safari lodge in Botswana, built in 1964 and since converted into a luxury tented lodge with eight tented suites, and Mashatu Tent Camp, built in 1987 and 1988 with eight private tents. The Explorer Collection holds Fika Futi Safari Camp with four bedrooms for eight guests, Shalimpo Safari Home, a self-catering house for eight renovated in 2023, and the WalkMashatu and Night Under the Stars experiences.

That spread means a family, a photographic group and a couple can each find a Botswana safari lodge that suits how they want to travel, without leaving the same reserve. Several of the properties are exclusive-use, which matters for multi-generational groups and for photographers who want to set their own hours rather than work around a shared timetable.

The reserve behind the lodges

The Northern Tuli Game Reserve covers roughly 72,000 hectares, making it one of the largest privately owned game reserves in Africa. It sits in the remote east of Botswana where the Shashe and Limpopo rivers meet, at the point where Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa share a border. The landscape runs to sandstone ridges, mopane woodland, riverine forest and ancient baobabs, and supports 48 mammal species and over 350 bird species. Mashatu Game Reserve accounts for about 42,000 hectares of that total, roughly sixty per cent of the wider reserve.

Wildlife moves across the reserve without fences, drawn by the presence of eight rivers, and no animals are hunted or culled. Game drives are capped at three vehicles per sighting, which keeps encounters unhurried. Many of the rangers and trackers have guided at Mashatu for decades, some for more than forty years, and that continuity shows in how they read the ground.

Conservation built into the operation

Five of Mashatu's six camps run on solar power and are classified as green camps, helped by the roughly 95 per cent sunshine days Botswana records each year. Laundry is sun-dried, gardens are planted with indigenous species, and guests are given refillable flasks in place of single-use plastic. The reserve sources 95 per cent of its supplies from within Botswana, from food and beverages through to building and vehicle supplies, contributing around P91 million a year to the local economy. A central recycling plant at Merryhill, the reserve headquarters, handles glass, tins and waste reuse.

Conservation levies, which are included in the stay, fund the practical work. That covers erosion rehabilitation, alien plant control, elephant-safe fencing to protect the more than 86 Iconic Trees of Mashatu, and a saving of about a million litres of water a month. Hydra VIS systems and wildlife tracking feed spatial data into research on elephants, big cats and migratory birds. Levies also support anti-poaching units, human-wildlife conflict management and restoration work through the Tuli Conservation Trust and NOTUGRE.

The coastal half of the collection

Pambele sits on Mozambique's secluded coast in the Bazaruto area and runs entirely off-grid. It generates its own power from solar, produces all its water through desalination, and draws drinking water directly from atmospheric humidity. Guests receive a biodegradable wheatstraw refillable bottle, and the house works with small-scale island suppliers wherever it can. Ongoing projects include the development of a community clinic. The house was originally built in 2007, renovated in 2023 and relaunched in 2025 as a barefoot-luxury beach house taking up to ten guests on an exclusive-use basis.

Mozambique itself has more than 2,500 kilometres of Indian Ocean coastline, with reefs, dhow sailing and archipelagos including Bazaruto and Quirimbas. Travellers looking at Mozambique beach resorts after a week in the bush will find the pairing works well in September, when several days of diving, snorkelling, kayaking and unhurried beach dinners balance out the early starts of a safari itinerary. Because both halves sit within the same collection, the logistics between them are handled by one team.

A collection with a stated purpose

The name Kaelo comes from the Setswana word meaning to guide, guardian, or to nurture, and the company builds its stated values around that idea: conservation-first tourism, authentic experiences and community upliftment. What started as two properties has grown into a curated collection, and the group says the same purpose carries through as new destinations join. Full details on the walking season, the hides, the individual properties and the current rates are on the Kaelo Destinations website at https://kaelodestinations.com/.

About Kaelo Destinations

Kaelo Destinations is a southern African travel collection offering safari lodges, tented camps and private homes in Botswana's Northern Tuli Game Reserve, together with an exclusive-use beach house on the Mozambican coast. Its properties are grouped into Luxury, Safari and Explorer collections and are operated on a conservation-first basis, with solar-powered camps, off-grid coastal infrastructure, local sourcing and conservation levies that fund anti-poaching, habitat restoration and community projects. The group is majority owned by Maggie and Stephen Lansdown, whose involvement in the Tuli region dates to 2007. Reservations are handled from South Africa.

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Kaelo Destinations
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +27 31 761 3440
Website: https://kaelodestinations.com/