Game viewing and bird-watching are the main activities here, and there's always something going on if you can find it! Start at the main waterhole, which is often the centre for action – though sadly often also quite busy with vehicles.

Driving at night is not allowed, though often the wildlife will come quite close enough if you just stay in your campsite/lodge and keep looking around you.

Hitching a ride

The Kori bustard (Ardeotis kori) is one of the world's heaviest flying birds, weighing up to 17kg, and – despite a wingspan of 2.8m – it is a reluctant flyer, needing a good run-up to get airborne. On the ground, these stately birds strike conspicuous figures, and are often seen around the pans, either picking their way hesitantly across the grassland in pairs, one at least 100 metres from its partner, or resting in the midday shade of an acacia.

Kori bustards often associate with game herds, whose trampling hooves disturb the locusts, beetles, reptiles and other small creatures on which they feed. In turn, they sometimes provide a similar service for the carmine bee-eater (Merops nubicoides). This dazzling bird arrives from Central Africa in October, and spreads out across the grassland in large flocks. Its usual hunting technique is to hawk for insects – particularly bees – in acrobatic sorties from a fixed perch, such as an anthill or bush, and return to the perch to dispatch and swallow the catch. In open grassland, where fixed perches are in short supply, a kori bustard provides an ideal mobile alternative.

In fact the bustard goes one better than a bush by actively stirring up food for the bee-eater, which snaps up whatever it can catch around the bigger bird's feet before settling again on its back. Bee-eaters are not known to try this trick from the backs of mammals, yet the bustard remains surprisingly tolerant of its passengers, and sometimes two or more of them will hitch a ride.