Painted Elephants and Famous Painted Trees at Nxai Pan

Caked with mud, these elephants are adapted to dry, desert-like conditions. Giant bulls drank and splashed themselves, a fireworks display of fresh mud and fountains of dust hitting their great, grey forms. Their bodies were giant canvases for Jackson Pollock splatter in earth tones. Some glistened, observing the world through eyelids weighed down by muddied stalactites of eyelashes. They hurled dust into the air – spectral split-second vanishments by these ghosts of the pans. →

Colour Festival
Dust, mud, and elephants at the waterhole at golden hour are like bush fireworks without the bang.

For some of the bulls, this was warpaint. Huge heads shook, slapping ears upsetting the silence until distance affirmed dominance – a slow-motion scattering of elephants. Some moved off as solitary forms towards the horizon; others tacked onto the back of grey caravans that upset the flatness of the landscape. These are the painted elephants of Nxai.

If ghost elephants are emissaries of the past, the fossil pan at Nxai holds history aplenty for them to herald. Botswana’s perfectly preserved natural spaces are a cause of celebration, but they have not always taken the form we revere today. Nxai Pan National Park – and neighbouring Makgadikgadi Pans National Park – form part of the ancient lakebed of Lake Makgadikgadi. This enormous inland super-lake was once fed by the Okavango, Cuando, and Zambezi Rivers. Through a series of geological and climactic changes, a slow-motion disappearing act transformed a giant body of water into Kalahari Desert sands. From ghost elephants to ghost lakes. →

Vulture Flex
The waterhole attracts creatures large and small, avian and elephantine.

Sentinels Over Salt Pans
Overlooking this lunar landscape, one of Africa's most iconic trees are almost lithographic against the white of the pans around it.

Thomas Baines painted these baobabs in 1862. In an age where everything changes so fast, how special to think of a place so little changed since this painting was made – and for the hundreds of years they were the landmark for the San people of Botswana. In the hostile environment around them, these Sleeping Sisters stand on a platform overlooking barren pan.

Baobabs are such an iconic symbol of Africa – an utterly unique tree to represent a diverse and awe-inspiring continent. They’re exciting wherever you see them in Africa, but there is something about this whitespace setting that underscores their jagged, otherworldly magnificence. I snapped away with my camera. While I am very happy to have these pictures to look back on, it is Baines’ depiction in paint or the compass point of earliest man that hold far greater gravity in my imaginings. The deep imprint of elephant tracks leading to the trees tell stories of wet seasons past – ghost stories, perhaps. →

Spotted in the Grass
A photograph you can almost hear if you are familiar with guineafowl in the grass.

Predators' Golden Shadow
With so much focus on 'the Big 5', jackals are fascinating and entertaining creatures to encounter in the bush - usually in the wake of larger predators.

Safari Meets Salt Pan
Nxai Pan combines dry, barren fossil pan landscapes with safari. Read our detailed Nxai Pan packing advice and contact us for tailored safari packing advice for your Botswana safari itinerary.

Heavyweight Champion of the Skies
The kori bustard is the heaviest flying bird in the world. When they are earth-bound, they are pretty astounding too.

Painted Skies
The painted elephants at Nxai Pan, the painted trees at Baines' Baobabs, and the rest of the park are given a special palette of painted skies at sunrise and sunset.

Silent Moments With Quiet Creatures
Secreted away among the grass, there is wonderful wildlife to find in the great grassy plains at Nxai Pan.