Not many in India have heard of the Okovango, the great African river, which runs for a thousand miles and finally disappears in the sands of the Kalahari Desert– without ever reaching the sea. This in itself is an extraordinary thing that a great river should simply disappear in the sand.

Although there is no sea, there is a delta! A delta in the desert! A vast area of 16,000 sq km with innumerable channels enclosing countless islands, big and small.

This delta, the Okavango Delta is home to a great variety of fish, birds and animals. From the massive sitatunga, an aquatic antelope, to the great African lion; from the magnificent fish eagle to the African jacana; from the marabou stork to the snorting hippo— you can find them all here in this place where the lush papyrus sway in the breeze that ripples over the lucid, pristine waters.

A truly amazing place where land and water have mingled to create a place like nothing else on earth. An oasis of unparalleled beauty, the largest in the world.

Did you know?

The river has its birth in the central highlands of Angola. At this point, it is just two streams– the Cuto and the cutango. Fed by rainwater runoff, the two streams rush southwards. Soon they become one, the Okavango. The river flows through the northern border of Namibia, finally tumbling over the Popa Falls and entering northern Botswana, near the village Mohenbo.

Entering flatlands the river slows down and runs for a 100 km in what is called the Panhandle. Here, in places the river is more than a kilometre wide. It gradually slows down, becoming shallower, depositing an estimated 5,00,00 tons of silt and sediments.

In geological times, the Okavango, along with two other rivers, the mighty Zambezi and the Chobe, flowed into a super lake in northern Botswana. This super lake has been estimated to have been 30 to 80 thousand sq km in extent and about 100 metres deep.

Passing through this inland sea (or super lake) the waters of the three rivers would join the Limpopo River and then flow into the Indian Ocean. But cataclysmic tectonic upheavals changed all that. The formation of the Great African Rift also resulted in a tilting and gradual uplifting of the earth’s surface in northern Botswana.

The course of the Zambezi and Chobe got diverted: they no longer flowed into the super lake. The Okavango, separated from the other two rivers, got trapped in a trough. The super lake gradually dried up resulting in the present day Makgadikgadi salt pans. 

The trough in which the Okavango got trapped gradually filled up with the river’s sediments and wind-swept sand. (Some 6,00,000 tons of sand and silt are deposited every year.) As the river coming from the north got impeded in the sand and silt, it broke up into countless channels forming the present Okavango Delta.

Even today, in the flood season the excess waters form new channels as the old channels get silted up. This has resulted in the typical fan formation of the delta.

The flow of the water from the delta is impeded by two faults, the Kungere and the Thalamakane. The latter 159 miles long, acts like a dam.

Although an estimated 11 cubic km water enters the delta in the flood season, just about 3 per cent of the water flows out. (The rest gradually evaporates in the intense heat of the desert.)

This splits into two streams: the Boteti which flows eastwards, through a break in the fault, towards the Makgadikgadi pan and a smaller stream, the Nehabe, which flows southwest into Lake Ngami.

Pure water

The waters of the Okavango as they enter Botswana are unpolluted. There is no industry or agriculture on the banks of the river. The two streams mentioned above carry away the salt in the river, leaving the water in the delta fresh and limpid.

The delta is a vast number of islands, big and small, criss-crossed by innumerable waterways. An estimate puts the number of these islands at over 50,000! The volume of water in the delta is not constant.

Flooding begins in the north around midsummer. By the time the waters from the Panhandle move into the south, it will be May-June. The delta which, in the dry season, is about 6000 sq miles may grow into 9,000 sq. miles depending on the floods. Many small islands disappear, to emerge again in the dry season.

The Okavango is an angler’s paradise. There are about 35 million fish in the Panhandle, belonging to 80 different species. The predator tiger fish preys on the other fish and it, in turn, is eaten by the crocodiles here, which are among the largest in Africa. The tiger fish is also a much sought –after catch by the anglers who come from all over the world. 

The boatman who takes you on a ride in the delta will tell you all about the wide variety of birds here  and point out ecstatically at a bird on the wing or in the dive. As for bigger animals, the panhandle is the home of the sitatunga, a massive aquatic antelope weighing a 100kg.

The Okavango, pulsating with life all the time, wears a changing look as the sun courses through the sky from dawn to dusk.

The exhilarating breezy look in the morning, punctuated with the shrieks of eagles and the twitter of small birds, and the croaking of the frogs gives way to a somber look as the trees are silhouetted against the red western sun. A silence descends on land and water as darkness envelopes the scene. The stillness of the night is broken by the deep-throated roar of the lion.

The entry point into the Okavango Delta is Maun, a small dusty town in northern Botswana. There is no electricity in the delta; no municipal water in the tap; no shops, no roads. All supplies are airlifted; electricity is locally generated at each camp. In the afternoon, we set out on our expedition in the delta in a mokoro.

The mokoro is a dugout canoe which can seat just two passengers, with two boatmen. The long and narrow boat shoots through the all-encompassing weeds like an arrow. You see a waterway only when the boat slices through the grass. Otherwise you only see a vast field of shining, golden grass. Only the boatmen know where they can slice through the flooded, grassy plain.

Once or twice, a dark, massive shadow was sighted a couple of feet away from the mokoro, under the water. We were told that it was a crocodile! On this trip we explored the waterways for about three hours. Then it was time for a sundowner. The mokoro was grounded near an island and we stepped out.

Timeless beauty

I thought we had moved into a different world the moment the camp was left behind and we were in the all-encompassing swamp. But now, with the red sun sinking in the west and the waters glistening in a marvellous crimson and gold, with a line of storks in the distance, I felt the timeless beauty of the Okavango delta.

The delta is not always an earthly paradise. In the dry season , with the flood plains dry and water in the main channels— there are six of them— at the minimum, death stalks the delta. Let alone fish which die in thousands, even hippos get bogged in small puddles of water, with hardly anything to eat.

The bigger game move out to other places. Life returns with the rains and the flood. The panhandle bristles with flashing fish and croaking frogs and the channels and waterways of the delta once again reflect the clouds and the sky, with the crocodiles basking in the sun and the hippos grunting and tumbling in the water.