STILL WATERS

A glide along the Okavango Delta, the lifeblood of Botswana, reveals its magnificence—and its vulnerabilities

By Alex Postman

IT seems, on some level, like an im-possibility. In the semi-arid highlands of Angola, hundreds of trickling streams join forces with two mighty rivers, the Cuito and the Cubango, which flow through Namibia and into Botswana as the Okavango, then spill into a fan-shaped 4,600-square-mile wetland before vanishing into the sands of the Kalahari Desert. Poof. But it’s really more like a miracle. Rains that fall in Angola during the previous wet season, from November through May, propel the Okavango River along its 1,000-mile downhill course in June, pushing with it 2.5 trillion gallons of water that fuel a tsunami of life through a massive network of palm islands, channels, and lagoons: Botswana’s Okavango Delta. As the water engulfs the previous season’s parched landscape, virtually everything it touches is reborn. The…

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Conde Nast Traveler (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2024

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