Close to the Panhandle, west of Moremi, NG25 is a particularly beautiful concession covering about 600km² of the upper Okavango Delta. Most of this is a fairly wet environment, with extensive floodplains especially around the Jao Flats, though there is a substantial, drier section to the west of the reserve, where the new Tubu Camp is situated. The annual flood generally reaches this reserve around April or May, instantly expanding the area of the floodplains.

Getting there and away
As with most camps, flying in here is the only option, and almost always booked in advance. Driving here is totally impractical.

When to visit
For the water activities anytime is fine as long as it doesn’t rain. Hence from April to November would be my choice of time to visit. However, if you’re on a serious game-viewing trip then better to come towards the end of the dry season where this area’s diversity of species does pick up, with dry-country species like cheetah being seen here periodically.

What to see and do
I would visit Jao and Kwetsani primarily for their water activities, trips by boat and mokoro, which they can generally offer all year (though motor boats at Kwetsani may be restricted by water levels around October-January). That said, day and night game drives (and sometimes short walks on the islands) are also possible here, and will make a bonus for your stay.
Jacana is also best regarded as a water-based camp, with motor boats and mokoro trips all year, as well as game drives when the water levels are not in high flood. Tubu is quite the opposite: a dry-land camp for game drives which can also arrange mokoro trips when the flood levels are high. A couple of nights at Jacana, and a few at Tubu, make a relatively inexpensive combination, at least by the standards of the Delta.
The comfortable game-drive vehicles in this reserve tend to use vehicles with three rows of three seats, of which a few are often left empty. When I last went walking, the guide was a capable, experienced walking guide who gave an appropriate pre-departure safety briefing and clearly knew how to use the rifle that he carried. He also escorted the mokoro trip, which I was pleased to see eschewed the easier hippo trails in favour of a more difficult, but much safer, route through a shallow floodplain. Though he’s now left this reserve, I hope that the standards of safe practice, which he set, will remain.