SAN CAMP KALAHARI, BOTSWANA

Imagine a smattering of billowing white tents, shaded by desert palms and surrounded by a thousand acres of shimmering, sparkling nothingness. You’ve just dreamt up San Camp, Naturals Selection’s impossibly romantic, seven-bedroom camp on the edge of the Nwetwe Pan in Botswana’s Makgadikgadi.

San isn’t a place for frills and fluffiness. The magic is in the minimalism, both at the camp and in the mysterious desert landscape. You can forget the tourist crowds and over-stuffed 4x4s too; it’s just you, the wildlife, and a handful of local San Bushmen, waiting to share their secrets with you.

Iconic in its own right, Nwetwe is home to a myriad of meerkats that pop up from the desert dust, brown hyena hiding in the grass, and the ethereal surroundings and atmosphere that makes San Camp spectacular in simplicity. Disappear into a remote world, a million miles from glowing screens and fruit-themed devices, where the 360-degree panoramas are so vast; you can see the curvature of the earth.

The real allure of San Camp is in its unpretentiousness, and this extends to the setting. San sits at the edge of the mysterious Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, overlooking Nwetwe Pan to be precise, in the heart of the Kalahari Desert and adjoining the Makgadikgadi National Park.

The pans were once a super lake covering most of Botswana, and they shimmer seemingly never-ending to the horizon, interrupted only by scatterings of desert palms and baobabs. The beautiful nothingness brings with it a cathartic sense of silence, and there is truly nowhere on earth like this magical corner of Botswana.