For many, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is their favourite wilderness experience. It may be hot and dry, but it is also spectacular – each visitor seeing something in it that is special to them. It may be the frieze of a bateleur emblazoned against a magenta sunset; a family of meerkats scoping the landscape from their burrow; the broiling cloud of dust enveloping a 
pronking springbok; or simply being part of something wonderfully elemental – a place to recharge tired nerves.
The Kalahari Thirstland
The Kalahari stretches from the Orange River in South Africa northwards across eastern Namibia, Botswana, western Zimbabwe, Angola, Zambia, into the Democratic Republic of Congo and over the equator – all in all, at 1,63 million square kilometres, an immense basin containing the largest area of sand in the world. ‘It is commonly termed a desert,’ wrote Michael Knight and Peter Joyce in The Kalahari: Survival in a Thirstland Wilderness, ‘because its sandy, porous soils, its blistering summers, its far and often featureless landscapes, its low and unpredictable rainfall and its almost total lack of surface water. But only in a few places does it match the popular images conjured by the word, and is more properly defined as “wilderness”, “thirstland” and, rather more technically, “semi-arid biome”.’
Model of Cooperation
The portion of the Kalahari most resembling a desert is that contained in the south-west. Until the mid-19th century it was rich in game, but a legion of hunters so decimated herds that it soon became necessary to establish a reserve. In the 1930s the area in South Africa between the Nossob and Auob rivers was proclaimed the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park; and to the east in present day Botswana a large tract was set aside as the Gemsbok National Park. While the international border between the two countries ran along the Nossob, the key feature of conservation here was the absence of a border fence to allow the natural movement of animals. While the two parks always co-operated closely, this relationship was given political effect in 2000 by the creation of the single Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park – one of the biggest conservancies in the world and a model for similar collaboration elsewhere.
Trees and their Occupants
This is a desolate land of metallic cloudless skies, wave upon wave of windswept red sand dunes, sun-baked russet grasslands, dusty grey shimmering riverbeds and bleached mineral rich pans – a land where drought is the normal condition. The life giving sands of the Kalahari are bound together and cooled by a sprinkling of grasses, scrub and well-spaced trees in and along the riverbeds. Commonest, and arguably the most important, is the shepherd’s tree whose branches reach down to the ground to provide welcome shade. But the prince of trees is the camelthorn, which gives scaffolding for the massive thatch communal nests of the sociable weaver. These roosts, which can measure 7 metres in length and weigh hundreds of kilograms, in turn present a tight-knit base for the nests of martial eagles and giant eagle owls; and serve as apartments for the pygmy falcons and pied barbets that are among the 200 migratory and 78 resident bird species found in the park.
The Regal Gemsbok
Those seeking the shade of these magnificent trees include the famed black maned lions of the Kalahari, cheetah, leopard, caracal, yellow mongoose, bat-eared fox, reptiles, predatory insects and arachnids. But the most iconic are the regal gemsbok. ‘The legend of the unicorn, it is said, was born from the oryx of Arabia, known in sub-Saharan Africa as the gemsbok,’ wrote Knight and Joyce. ‘And indeed this antelope, when seen in profile, does seem to recall the fabled equine beast with its solitary horn held proudly aloft. Like the unicorn, too, it is a splendid looking animal, stately in bearing, eye-catching in its black, grey and white markings, dangerous in its armoury. The slender, scimitar-like horns can measure an impressive 100 centimetres and more from base to needle-sharp tip, and they have been known to impale lions and keep marauding hyenas at bay.’
Getting and Staying There
Visitors can fly or drive to Upington in the Northern Cape then take the R360 to the park entrance at Twee Rivieren, which also has a landing strip for smaller aeroplanes and car hire. The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park offers a safe opportunity to experience a hostile land without the necessity of mounting a full-scale expedition. On the South African side there are three rest camps and three wilderness camps connected by well maintained game viewing roads along the dry beds of the Auob and Nossob rivers. Along these routes are well located picnic spots, with the one at Union’s End on the border of Namibia evoking a sensation of being at the remotest spot on earth. There are no tourist facilities on the Botswana side, which is accessible only to the owners of 4x4’s.
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