It is June 2026, and the remote eastern corner of Botswana where the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers meet has slipped fully into the dry season. The grasses have thinned, the bush has opened up and the rivers have drawn animals towards their permanent water. For Mashatu, the private game reserve known across the region as the Land of the Giants, this is the heart of its peak game-viewing period, and the lodge is welcoming winter visitors who want to experience the Northern Tuli at its most accessible.
Mashatu sits within the Northern Tuli Game Reserve, on 42,000 hectares of privately held wilderness at the tri-border confluence where Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe meet. The landscape is unusually varied for a single reserve, taking in open plains, grasslands, riverine forests, rocky hills, marshland and sandstone ridges. That diversity is part of what makes a winter Botswana safari here distinct from the better-known delta and floodplain destinations further north and west. Visitors travelling through the dry months find sightlines that stretch far across the plains and game that concentrates around the reserve’s water sources.
Why winter is the season to visit
The southern African winter, running through the middle months of the year, is the driest and most predictable time on the reserve. Mashatu records rain-free conditions across the overwhelming majority of the year, a pattern measured over more than two decades, and the cooler winter days bring comfortable…
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