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Machaba Camp
The 1950s safari, alive and well on the Khwai.
From our guest surveys — how we gather evidence
The safari your grandparents promised you
Machaba Camp is built to the template of the classic 1950s safari — Meru canvas, wooden floors, lamplight and a fire that never goes out — and it wears the style as a working camp, not a museum. The tents stand under the riverine canopy along the Khwai, where the opposite bank is already Moremi Game Reserve, and the entertainment is the river: elephant and hippo cross in front of camp so routinely that check-in often comes with an audience. Meals gather everyone at the long table or under the stars, and the small pool at the river view handles the midday heat.
The name comes from the Setswana word for the sycamore fig — the great riverine “tree of life” these banks are famous for — and the hosting matches the tree: generous, rooted, and the reason guests keep describing the camp as the one that spoiled them for everywhere else.
Classic canvas, properly appointed
The ten Meru tents are the real 1950s silhouette with none of the era's hardships: wooden floors, walls of wide mesh window, hot water at pressure, electricity, and beds guests rank with their own at home. En-suite bathrooms run to his-and-hers basins with indoor showers, and an outdoor bathtub under a tree turns the sundowner hour romantic. A family tent takes a couple and their two children, or three adults, under one roof.
Privacy is built into the spacing: tents sit apart along the treeline, each facing its own stretch of bush, so the flaps can stay open to the river's soundtrack of frogs and hippo.
Khwai's headline country
The Khwai Concession's floodplains and woodland are wild dog ground, with leopard close behind and lion prides raising cubs in plain view — and Machaba drives that ground twice a day, morning and afternoon, six guests to an open vehicle. Come the dry months the animals gather along the river, and the verdict that recurs is variety: no two drives alike, from sable antelope to nursing hyena dens. Two caveats belong to Machaba's own programme. Walks need a qualified walking guide to be in camp; the mokoro needs water in the channels — when both line up, they are the quiet counterpoint to the drives.
The wildlife keeps no office hours here: baboons commute over the tents at dawn, elephant browse between the guy-ropes, and an escort to your tent after dinner is occasionally a negotiation with a bull elephant on the path.
No camp has this ground to itself: self-drivers and other camps share the Khwai concession too, and with its fame a headline sighting can draw a queue of vehicles — the operator itself acknowledges the traffic has grown. The compensation is the ground itself: few places in Botswana produce sightings this reliably, this close to camp.
Machaba is the Setswana name for the sycamore fig — the vast riverine “tree of life” whose year-round figs feed everything from green pigeons to elephant, and the tree this stretch of the Khwai grows its shade from.
A classic safari for every generation
Machaba has no lower age limit, and the classic-camp format turns out to be the family format: one long table, a fire in the evening, and wildlife arriving at camp so the youngest safari-goers don't need to last a full drive to see it. The family tents keep everyone behind one door. Three rules shape the programme for children: walking starts at sixteen, the mokoro at twelve, and a party with a child under six must hire its own private safari vehicle for the length of its stay — in practice, a family drive on your own schedule.
The Khwai riverfront proper
Light aircraft bring you from Maun to Khwai Airstrip, and the drive in is already a game drive — through the community concession to Machaba's stretch of the Khwai River, under its sycamore figs. Moremi Game Reserve is the far bank; this is the Delta's north-eastern edge.
What it costs.
Rates are per person per night, based on two guests travelling together (sharing).
Stay three nights and pay for two in Khwai's green months, when the permanent river still holds the game, newborn animals and returning migrant birds fill the drives, and the afternoon storms blow through fast.
The complete classic
Machaba is what most people picture when they picture a safari camp — and it delivers the picture with the details attended to. The riverfront theatre, the wild-dog country, the long-table warmth, the tents that romance the past without reviving its plumbing: it is the complete classic, and it takes the whole family along. When a Botswana journey takes in the Khwai, it is the camp we reach for first.
Is this for you
- ✓You're after the old canvas-and-lamplight safari, long table included, with modern comfort inside it
- ✓You're bringing children, whatever their ages, and want a camp made for that mix
- ✓Khwai's wild dogs and river wildlife are high on your list
Probably our favourite setting of the trip. You can sit around camp and still feel like you're on safari. Rooms comfy, staff lovely, didnt want to leave.
Send us the dates and who's travelling, and we'll plan the route with Machaba Camp at its centre — the flights in, the family tents, and a water camp to pair with it.
The fine print.
- —All meals
- —Local-brand drinks
- —Two scheduled safari activities daily
- —Return Khwai airstrip transfers
- —Laundry
- —Flights to and from Khwai Airstrip
- —Premium-brand drinks
- —Conservation & community levy (charged per person per night)
- —Private vehicle hire
- —Travel and medical insurance
- —Gratuities and items of a personal nature
Yes — Machaba has no minimum age. If anyone in the party is under six, the family pre-books its own safari vehicle for the stay. Mokoro trips start at twelve; walks at sixteen.
A light-aircraft flight from Maun lands you at Khwai Airstrip; the road from there to camp is driven as a game drive.
No fence stands between the tents and the river, so animals pass through camp at any hour; after dark the staff see you to your tent, and occasionally wait for an elephant to move first.