What to Wear for Safari in Botswana
Or any other safari destination in Southern Africa in winter
Thank you for all the likes and kind comments on last weeks post! I’m so grateful for the response on something that felt a bit vulnerable to share. This week I’m changing it up with a piece is inspired by one of my lovely subscribers (thanks for the excuse, Colleen!) It reflects my experience on safari in Botswana during winter in the southern hemisphere (june-aug).
Botswana is home to the Okavango Delta, an inland delta that doesn’t flow out to any sea, which always have fascinated me. Combine that with its location basically in the Kalahari Desert, and you have a wild and unreal landscape teeming with wildlife. Going on safari in Botswana was truly a dream of a lifetime!
What you’ll need to pack naturally depends on which kind of safari you booked and when you’re going. We had booked a midrange safari with a combination of camping, tented lodges and lodges. Our trip started in Johannesburg and ended in Victoria Falls with lots of driving in between. If you have booked a highed luxury safari you might need more fancy clothing than I packed.
We visited Botswana in July, which is the middle of the winter in the Southern Hemisphere, which is quite important to remember when packing. Even though it’s Africa, nights can get really cold! Not at least due to the delta being located in a desert, there’s not much cloud coverage to keep the warmth of the day from escaping during the night. Days will easily get 25-30°C (77-86°F) and it can get below freezing at night.
We were told that we only could bring 12 kg (26 pounds) in a softsided bag.1 When we joined our group, we found that the rest of the group had been told varying limits and bag requirements, but I’m happy we only brought 12 kg as it made getting around a lot easier. We didn’t have any porters on this trip, so we had to carry our luggage ourselves. Not gonna lie, I did chuckle a bit when I saw one french woman dragging her 18 kg fullsize luggage through the soft desert sand from the bus to our lodging the first night. She didn’t wear half of what she brought on the trip anyway.
As you do (or at least I do) when having booked a trip like a safari where you have no idea what to wear - I googled it! The answer I got was to wear beige, khaki and olive and avoid black and bright blue - as the last two colours apparently attract tsetse flies. I think this is mainly a concern in areas with cattle like the Masai Mara in Kenya and not that much of a concern in the Okavango. Light grey was also suggested.
A lot of list included a playsuit, which is a personal pet peeve of mine. Unless you only have short game drives or don’t drive through very remote areas (most of Botswana is remote!) you might have to go “bushy-bushy” as our guides called it - literally behind a bush. The guides will check if there are any lions or elephants around, but who wants to be caught basically naked if a lion or something else suddenly appears? I love the look of a playsuit, but with a limited luggage allowance, I wouldn’t want to bring anything I only could wear at camp. And due to it being really really cold at night, you probably won’t want to wear it then.
When we arrived, the only advice from the guides was to avoid wearing white and red when leaving the safari vehicle or on walking safaris - which hadn’t been mentioned anywhere. Most animals are pretty colourblind, but red and white are bright enough that they will attract the animals’ attention. We unfortunately had one incident where someone were wearing a bright white shirt when sitting atop a hide near a waterhole, and an elephant got curious and ended up pushing the safari truck and putting his trunk in the cab, where our driver was seated. Nothing happened, but it could have gone wrong. So please, don’t wear white on game drives if you might leave the vehicle - it could put someone in danger.
I admit to wanting to look cute in pictures and loving the safari style, but a lot of people wore street clothes. I love wearing beige and olives, so I didn’t have to go and buy a whole new wardrobe - and I wouldn’t advice you to. Look what you have in muted colours and most colours would probably work as long as you as mentioned avoid white and red (and blue and black if visiting areas with tsetse flies, but the advice seems divided on this one). My husband generally wore khaki and grey as those are more prevalent in his wardrobe.
I ended up packing 3 pairs of pants: 1 olive cotton/linen and 1 beige cargo pant for safari drives and 1 rust coloured linen pants for wearing at night and when we got to Victoria Falls. Going on a game drive can be super dusty and I loved having something else to change into at night.
Some camps offers laundry service, but only one of ours did, so we did a lot of handwashing. Having two pairs of pants for safari allowed one pair to dry while I wore the other. I also brought a pair of shorts, but didn’t wear them much. Another leightweight pair of pants would have been a better option for me. Some of the others wore shorts beneath their pants and change when it got hot during the day. When sitting in a vehicle I don’t like the feeling of the leather (plastic) seat against my bare skin, but that just might be me.
Layers are key, and you want to bring something that layers easily atop each other. Morning game drives will typically start around 5 or 6 am. when temperature is still quite low and it doesn’t warm up untill around 9 or 10 am. Sitting in an open safari vehicle going 50 km/h is super windy and cold! On top I wore a t-shirt, a button up, a merino sweater, a lightweight downjacket and a jacket made of cotton and I was still cold, even though we had blankets. I would have like to have had a windbreaker of some form. We also wore beanies and gloves. My husband laughed at me when I suggested he brought a beanie and gloves, and only did bring gloved because i insisted. Was he glad when he found a beanie in his pocket while we were there! The funny thing is that he has lived in nearby Zimbabwe as a child and experienced snow there, so he should know better.
The cold, the wind and the dust is why you want to bring scarves. I would suggest bringing one bandana to pull over your nose when driving through a dust cloud (and to add a bit of flair to your outfit) as well a larger lightweight scarf that you can use as sun protection (I hung mine as a curtain in the bus at times!) but also to protect your neck from the cold. I also brought a slightly thicker pashmina that I wore at night over my sweater. None of the rest of the group had thought to bring winter accessories, so they were a bit envious. One person even just had a sweatshirt and no jacket at all. (Yes I keep going on about the cold, but people do seem to forget that Africa gets cold.) Some luxury lodges will provide ponchos and a hot water bottle, but don’t count on it.
A hat is a true essentials. My husband and I ended up purchasing the exact same one, because it fit the best, and beside from the twinning I couldn’t have loved it more. Being quite pale, sunprotection is key and it saved many bad hair days! I also loved having a headband to cover greasy hair. The lodges near the national parks and game reserves are quite remote, so if something happens to the water tower (which it did during our trip) it can take a while to getting it repaired. Don’t expect everything to work the way it does back home.
For tops I packed two button ups - 1 beige and 1 with beige stripes (possibly influenced by the photo above…). I would’ve liked to have had another shirt, but at the last moment pulled out a white one - as stated above it wouldn’t have been that practical anyway. I also packed two olive t-shirts (again would have loved an extra possibly in brown) and one short sleeved shirt (bad idea as it didn’t layer well and I only wore it once).
I brought one sleeveless shirt that I only wore in Victoria Falls, but I was okay with that, as it didn’t take up much space and was a chic option for Afternoon Tea at the Victoria Falls Hotel - don’t miss that if you’re ever in that area. We only paid 30 USD for two persons and it’s an incredible experience to sit at the lawn of this grand hotel built in 1904 with a view of the famous Victoria Falls Bridge connecting Zimbabwe and Zambia. You can see mongoose, warthogs and vervet monkeys on the lawn, and the waiters in their pristine black and white outfits carry slingshots in their backpockets to try and keep the monkeys from stealing the sugar packets of the table.
For sleeping I was so happy that I packed a proper pajamas and I even ended up wearing leggings and long-sleeve t-shirt underneath on the coldest nights. Tip: If you have a Nalgene bottle or a metal water bottle, fill it with boiling water, wrap it in a towel and take it to bed with you (if the place you’re staying isn’t putting hot water bottle in the bed). Just make sure it isn’t leaking! I was hugging my water bottle some nights, but I do easily get gold.
Makeup - in general just forgo it and wear SPF. Only bring the bare essentials, except if you’re staying somewhere extremely fancy. Getting up at 4 or 5 am, hurriedly washing in the cold, you really don’t want to bother with make-up. And even the most luxurious tented lodge is still cold! You’ll be wearing sunglasses for the majority of photos anyway, so you’ll end up looking chic with no makeup. At night I was so tired that it wasn’t a priority.
Footwear was a big conundrum for me, but in the end I brought my hiking shoes, sneakers, a pair of Tevas and a pair of flip flops (also to wear in the shower). A lot of sites recommend boots, but you will be in a vehicle most of the time, so it isn’t really necessary. I could have gone without the sneakers, but it was nice to have another option.
Botswana and the Okavango Delta was truly an amazing destination, and we’ve already decided that we have to go back one day. I can’t recommend it enough as an safari destination. We didn’t have a lot of crowds and we did see the big five: Elephant, Buffalo, Lion, Rhino and Leopard as well as a million other animals.
Two ressources I found helpful when deciding what to pack was Busbee Style’s video and Susan from Midlife Globetrotter’s article (except for the white and the playsuit!)
Times I mentioned “cold”: 11. Can you tell I was freezing at times on this trip? But if you just take one thing away from this article, I would love for it to be that you should bring warm clothes for a safari in winter.
How do you pack small - especially for vacations with very varied temperatures or activities? Do you in general overpack or underpack?
If you have any internal flights in smaller planes, stick to your limit. I’ve been told that they will charge you extra or in worst case make you leave your luggage behind if there isn’t space.
Thank you so much for writing this! I have almost a year until my safari, but I can start keeping my eye out for a few things I’m missing, and create a safari collection in my Indyx app😄
What a dream trip and such a helpful guide!