This is the main pan of the complex. It's covered with grasses and dotted with clumps of acacias – and has always provided me with the best game viewing in this park.

Getting around

In the dry season you'll find most of the roads in the area of the pan are good and hard – a pleasant contrast to the thick sand that you ploughed through to reach here.

When the rains come you'll have to be much more careful as many roads on the pan itself turn very muddy. Then the sand road in will be the easiest section, and the park itself will provide the problems. Make sure your self-sufficient vehicle includes a spade, and always carry some wood with you – both for campfires and for sticking under the wheels when you get stuck.

From Nxai Pan to Kgama-Kgama Pan
Visiting most recently in May, the roads which leads off east towards Kgama-Kgama Pan had clearly been used very little during the previous rains, and was very overgrown.
To reach this, head east from the scout post for about 10km, passing South Camp on your right. This should bring you to a junction of the tracks (GPS:NXAI16). From here one track leads off (and is clearly marked on most maps) to loop around to the southeast and then turn north. This is in a very poor state, totally overgrown, and is fast becoming impassable.

However, another track leads off heading north of east, before turning northeast, and after almost 5km reaches another junction (GPS: NXAI14). The road northeast to Kgama-Kgama Pan was not in good shape, though later in the dry season it should be fine.

The alternative, which leads roughly west, across the north end of the small pan to the east of Nxai, heads through an interesting area of mostly mopane woodland, mixed with some denser groves of terminalias, and even in May, some of the pans here retained water. This eventually leads west to North Camp (GPS: NXAINO).