Bags are packed, gear checked twice, and in a few days I'll be on a plane toward Kasane. Fourteen nights on the move from there: the salt plains of Nxai Pan and the Baines Baobabs, then south to the Okavango Delta itself — a few nights on a mekoro through the reed channels, camping on an island only reachable by dugout canoe. From there, Moremi's mix of swamp and dry bush, then Chobe from both ends — Savute's bull elephants first, then the Chobe riverfront, fish eagles calling over the water. The loop finishes at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, which feels like the right place to run out of road.
The Okavango stretch is the one leg of the route with no vehicle track at all — a mekoro poler standing at the stern, reading channels through the reeds that don't look, from where I'm sitting, like channels at all.
This is the first real trip out with the R5 Mark II, which after years of shooting on older bodies feels a bit like swapping a compass for radar. I'm curious what it changes and what it doesn't — technology helps you see more, but it still comes down to sitting still long enough for something wild to decide you're not worth running from.
I'll only be home a couple of weeks before I deploy to India for two months with the Centre for Wildlife Studies — so this trip is really the opening chapter of a much longer year. I'll post from the field where I can.
