Place to stay · North-West District
Hideaways Camelthorn Bush Camp
Seasonal seven-tent bush camp with bucket showers and solar lights on a private concession east of Moremi Game Reserve, open April to September.
Camelthorn Bush Camp is the plain sibling of Mankwe Tented Retreat. Both are run by Hideaways and share the same 85,000-hectare private concession on the eastern edge of the Okavango Delta, north of Maun. Camelthorn is the one to pick if you want canvas, a fire and not much else. It only operates from April to September and closes for the summer.
What to expect
Seven tents with twin beds, each with its own bathroom and a small patio. Showers are buckets, filled by staff when you ask. Lighting is solar. Lounge, bar and dining each have their own tent. There is wifi, which is more than you might expect from a camp with bucket showers.
A normal day is two shared drives on the concession, morning and afternoon. The alternative is one full-day drive to Moremi Game Reserve, the Khwai area or what the operator calls the Chobe Corridor. Mokoro and boat trips in the delta can be added at extra cost when water levels allow. Hideaways lists elephant, buffalo, giraffe, zebra and hippo as the animals you can reasonably expect, with lion seen often, leopard fairly often, and hyena and wild dog in the area.
Practical details
- 92 km from Maun, which the operator puts at 2 hours 30 minutes to 3 hours by road transfer.
- By air: a helicopter from Maun takes about 30 minutes, or fly to Khwai Private Airstrip and continue by road for about 3 hours 30 minutes.
- GPS from the operator: 19° 20’ 57” S, 23° 53’ 31” E.
- Children from age 7.
Good to know
The camp is unfenced. The operator suggests three nights, which is about right if you want both a Khwai day and a Moremi day without giving up the concession drives. Winter mornings here can drop below 10°C, so pack for cold as well as heat.
Last updated 12 October 2026. Sources: Hideaways Africa, Camelthorn Bush Camp, Hideaways Africa, Mankwe Tented Retreat.
Camelthorn: a giraffe's tree in a mopane forest
There is no camel in a camelthorn. The English name is the Afrikaans kameeldoring carried over word for word, and the kameel is the kameelperd, the giraffe, which eats the leaves from between the thorns. In Setswana the tree is mogotlho, so this camp and Hideaways’ lodge on the Khwai River near Mababe are named after the same tree in two languages.
It is an odd tree to name a camp after here, because what is written about this ground mostly says mopane. The neighbouring lodge’s old marketing called it a “mopane wonderland” and put camel thorn last in a long list of other trees. A Ghanzi overlander who uses the track past Mankwe as a quick way down from North Gate calls it deep sand and mopane forest, with elephants and impala all he has seen on it. Camelthorns like deep, dry sand, and the operator says the tents stand under tall ones.
How big is the concession? Pick a number
Hideaways puts NG43 at 85,000 hectares. Sun Destinations, which was selling Mankwe by November 2017, gave Mankwe’s private concession as 300,000 hectares that year and 365,000 in January 2022, when it also announced a further 20,000 hectares of driving rights along the Khwai. I could not find an official figure, or tell whether the two companies were measuring the same land. The smallest number comes from the people running it now, so that is the one I would plan around.
Camelthorn itself is new. Hideaways took on Mankwe in January 2025 and the trade notice from that month does not mention a second camp. One agent still files Camelthorn among the new or refurbished places it has not yet inspected. By the operator’s coordinates it is about a kilometre and a half north of Mankwe.
What has been seen, all of it from next door
I could find no independent account of a stay at Camelthorn. What exists is a handful of reports from Mankwe between 2021 and 2025, written for its marketing by a manager and a hosted travel agent. They record what has turned up, not odds.
Elephants are the safe bet. In November 2021 the manager, Yolande Pieterse, said bulls had at one stage been coming to the waterhole in front of Mankwe three or four times a day because the other waterholes had dried up, and that hyenas came every night, often seven at a sitting. That was as the dry season ran out. Camelthorn closes after September, so that month is the nearest its guests get to that picture, and the operator does not say whether the camp has a waterhole of its own.
Lions belong to the neighbours. The Mababe Pride, which the lodge’s March 2022 report calls the biggest in the Khwai area, is known from NG41, about 6 km from Mankwe. The manager found it round a waterhole, cubs sniffing at the vehicle’s wheels, with two males that had lately killed a buffalo. An agent’s group in October 2025 saw their lions on the day trip into Moremi, not on the concession.
Wild dogs are luck. The lodge’s February 2022 update called them nomadic and rare to spot while reporting a pack met on the road. Yet that 2025 group was being shown round Mankwe when dogs trotted past the plunge pool, and that afternoon they watched the pack of nine, pups included, for close to half an hour.
Mokoros are on the Khwai, not at the tents
One independent safari agent lists the old Mankwe Bush Lodge as “of peripheral interest”, which is harsh but true to the address. This is the dry edge of the delta, and mokoro trips happen on the Khwai, as part of a day out there. One forum regular says the cutline running north from Mankwe is signposted as closed to the public. That is one person’s report, so ask the camp before planning a short cut that way.
