Kaelo Destinations Debuts Botswana Tuli Block Walking Tours
Few experiences reshape a traveller's sense of the bush quite like leaving the vehicle behind, and this September Kaelo Destinations is spotlighting exactly that: the on-foot half of its collection, timed to the strongest stretch of Botswana's walking season in the Northern Tuli Game Reserve. The company runs safari lodges, tented camps and private homes across eastern Botswana, plus an exclusive-use beach house on the Mozambican coast. This month sits squarely inside the WalkMashatu walking window, which opens each year from March to October, and the reserve's peak season, which spans 1 July to 31 October. Guests who already have a drive-based season or two behind them tend to find that the guided trails, sunken photographic hides and fly-camp sleep-outs are what truly shift their perspective.
Walking the reserve instead of driving it
At Mashatu, swapping one of the two daily game drives for a guided safari walk is simple, handled as a straight exchange rather than a fresh booking. On foot, the whole scale of the reserve shifts. Rather than covering distance, guests move at a deliberate pace through mopane woodland and along riverbeds in the company of an experienced ranger, learning to read spoor, insect tracks and the scent of wild herbs, the fine detail a vehicle simply drives past. When visitors are deciding between a Botswana safari and a busier, more familiar reserve elsewhere in the region, that walking option frequently tips the balance.
WalkMashatu takes the idea a step further. No trail carries more than six guests, each is led by an experienced guide, and the route is shaped around the group's fitness and interests. Running in parallel is Night Under the Stars, an added activity offered year-round to guests at the Mashatu lodges and at Kolokolo Safari Home. The evening begins with an afternoon game drive out of the lodge, overnight bag in hand, to the WalkMashatu Fly Camp, where the hours are filled with a fire, dinner, night photography, storytelling or a short guided walk. Nights are spent in custom designed tents beneath an open Botswana sky, before a sunrise game drive carries everyone back to the lodge for brunch the next morning.
Hides that put the camera at eye level
Both of the reserve's photographic hides are set underground, and that is precisely their purpose. From the Matebole Photographic Hide, guests watch at eye level as elephants, antelope and a lengthy roll-call of bird species come down to drink just metres off. These sessions, offered morning or afternoon, are limited to nine people and led by the PhotoMashatu team, who bring over a decade of hide experience and can lend equipment support such as gimbals. Whether someone is new to the camera or a veteran, the guidance is tailored to the individual behind the lens.
Working from dusk to dawn, the Lala Limpopo Sleepout Hide, named by Conde Nast Traveller as the world's most intrepid sleepover, is a comfortable safari suite dug into the ground with an active waterhole about two metres from the photographing window and lighting built for night shooting. Guests dine, take their coffee and simply remain in place, following nocturnal wildlife through the small hours and waking to elephants at eye level. Anyone used to years of shooting wildlife from a raised vehicle will recognise the lowered angle as a genuinely distinct discipline. That same thinking travels into the field aboard the PhotoMashatu vehicle, which offers room for gear, fitted gimbal arms and a specially lowered floor for eye-level images.
Where guests actually stay
To make the range easier to navigate, Kaelo Destinations sorts its properties into three collections. Leading the Luxury Collection is Euphorbia Mashatu, a five-star property opened in 2021 with eight private villas and the first of its kind in the region, joined by Kolokolo Safari Home, an exclusive-use house for eight dating from the 1960s and renovated in 2023, as well as Pambele Beach House, La Grande Mare and the group's aviation services. Under the Safari Collection sit Mashatu Lodge, first built in the mid to late 1970s and hosting between fourteen and twenty-eight guests, Tuli Safari Lodge Mashatu, Botswana's oldest safari lodge, built in 1964 and later reworked into a luxury tented lodge of eight tented suites, and Mashatu Tent Camp, built across 1987 and 1988 with eight private tents. Rounding out the Explorer Collection are Fika Futi Safari Camp with four bedrooms for eight guests, Shalimpo Safari Home, a self-catering house for eight renovated in 2023, and the WalkMashatu and Night Under the Stars experiences.
With that breadth, a family, a photographic group and a couple can each settle on a Botswana safari lodge matched to their own style of travel without ever leaving the reserve. A number of the properties are exclusive-use, which counts for a great deal with multi-generational groups and with photographers who prefer to keep their own hours rather than fit into a shared schedule.
The reserve behind the lodges
Spanning roughly 72,000 hectares, the Northern Tuli Game Reserve ranks among Africa's largest privately owned game reserves. It lies in Botswana's remote east, where the Shashe and Limpopo rivers converge at the meeting point of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Sandstone ridges, mopane woodland, riverine forest and ancient baobabs make up the terrain, which sustains 48 mammal species and more than 350 bird species. Of that whole, Mashatu Game Reserve takes in about 42,000 hectares, close to sixty per cent of the wider reserve.
No fences interrupt the movement of wildlife here, with eight rivers drawing animals through, and nothing is hunted or culled. A cap of three vehicles per sighting keeps every game-drive encounter relaxed. Plenty of the rangers and trackers have worked these grounds at Mashatu for decades, a few for upwards of forty years, and that long familiarity is evident in how surely they read the land.
Conservation built into the operation
Of Mashatu's six camps, five are solar-powered and carry green-camp status, supported by the roughly 95 per cent of days Botswana enjoys in sunshine each year. Washing is dried in the sun, gardens are stocked with indigenous species, and refillable flasks replace single-use plastic for guests. The reserve draws 95 per cent of its supplies from inside Botswana, spanning food and beverages through to building and vehicle materials, and contributes around P91 million annually to the local economy. At Merryhill, the reserve headquarters, a central recycling plant deals with glass, tins and waste reuse.
The hands-on work is paid for through conservation levies folded into the stay. Those funds go toward erosion rehabilitation, alien plant control, elephant-safe fencing that safeguards the more than 86 Iconic Trees of Mashatu, and a monthly water saving of roughly a million litres. Spatial data from Hydra VIS systems and wildlife tracking feeds research into elephants, big cats and migratory birds. The levies likewise back anti-poaching units, human-wildlife conflict management and restoration efforts carried out through the Tuli Conservation Trust and NOTUGRE.
The coastal half of the collection
Over on Mozambique's secluded coast in the Bazaruto area, Pambele operates completely off-grid. Its power comes from its own solar generation, all of its water is produced through desalination, and drinking water is pulled straight from atmospheric humidity. Each guest is handed a biodegradable wheatstraw refillable bottle, and the house partners with small-scale island suppliers wherever possible. Among its current initiatives is the development of a community clinic. First built in 2007, then renovated in 2023, the house relaunched in 2025 as a barefoot-luxury beach house welcoming up to ten guests on an exclusive-use basis.
Mozambique stretches along more than 2,500 kilometres of Indian Ocean coastline, dotted with reefs, dhow sailing and archipelagos such as Bazaruto and Quirimbas. For anyone eyeing Mozambique beach resorts to follow a week in the bush, September suits the combination especially well, when several days of diving, snorkelling, kayaking and leisurely beach dinners offset the early mornings of a safari. And because both halves belong to the same collection, a single team takes care of the logistics in between.
A collection with a stated purpose
Kaelo draws its name from the Setswana word meaning to guide, guardian, or to nurture, and the company frames its stated values around that very notion: conservation-first tourism, authentic experiences and community upliftment. From an original pair of properties, it has become a curated collection, and the group maintains that the same purpose endures as new destinations are added. The walking season, the hides, the individual properties and the latest rates are all set out in full on the Kaelo Destinations website at https://kaelodestinations.com/.
About Kaelo Destinations
Kaelo Destinations is a southern African travel collection offering safari lodges, tented camps and private homes in Botswana's Northern Tuli Game Reserve, together with an exclusive-use beach house on the Mozambican coast. Its properties are grouped into Luxury, Safari and Explorer collections and are operated on a conservation-first basis, with solar-powered camps, off-grid coastal infrastructure, local sourcing and conservation levies that fund anti-poaching, habitat restoration and community projects. The group is majority owned by Maggie and Stephen Lansdown, whose involvement in the Tuli region dates to 2007. Reservations are handled from South Africa.
Media Contact
Kaelo Destinations
Email: reservations@kaelodestinations.com
Phone: +27 31 761 3440
Website: https://kaelodestinations.com/