Place to stay · Okavango Delta
Kanana Camp
Ker & Downey Botswana's tented camp on the Xudum River in the south-west of the delta, its main area rebuilt in 2025, with boat access to one of southern Africa's largest heronries.
Kanana is a fly-in tented camp on the Xudum River, in a private concession in the south-west of the Okavango Delta. Ker & Downey Botswana runs it from Maun. People come for two things that few camps can offer together: a private heronry reached by boat, and a steady chance of Pel’s fishing owl. It is a water camp first, so how good it is depends a lot on when you go.
What to expect
Seven safari tents take twins or doubles, each with a walk-in shower, and there is a two-bedroom family tent with two bathrooms. The tents sit on raised decks and are spread out along walkways. The main area was rebuilt in 2025 around an old strangler fig. There is a pool, wifi in camp, and the whole place runs on solar power.
Because the concession is private, guides can do night drives and walks with an armed guide as well as day drives, and each guest gets a window seat. Mokoro and motorboat trips run when the flood allows. The heronry is a boat ride of 35 to 40 minutes through papyrus channels, and it usually builds from mid-July to October.
Practical details
- Phone: +267 686 1282 (Ker & Downey Botswana, Maun).
- Access is by light aircraft from Maun, a flight of 15 to 20 minutes, then a short drive from the airstrip.
- Open all year. Fishing runs from March to December, with January and February closed.
- A sleep-out deck with a bed under a net and its own bathroom is offered from April to November.
Good to know
High water spreads the game out. Expert Africa says big floods thin out the animals here from about May to November, and that lower floods in recent years have made the game viewing better year-round. Children are welcome, and the minimum age quoted by agents is seven.
Last updated 12 October 2026. Sources: Ker & Downey Botswana, Kanana, Ker & Downey Botswana, contact, Expert Africa, Kanana.
A stork colony, a shy owl and a ghost rhino on the Xudum
The Ker & Downey on the sign goes back to East Africa just after the Second World War. In 1949 the firm took on a 24-year-old hunter called Harry Selby, the man Robert Ruark made famous in Horn of the Hunter. Selby moved his family to Maun in 1963 to open up Bechuanaland for the company, and in 1970 he built Khwai River Lodge, the first lodge in the country meant for overseas visitors with cameras instead of rifles. He died in Maun in January 2018, aged 92. The Botswana company dates itself to 1968.
The colony up the channel
The heronry is what birders book for. Pink-backed pelicans, marabou and yellow-billed storks, grey herons, ibises and egrets nest together, and one guest in September 2015 put the birds in the thousands. A visitor in July 2021 added spoonbill, darter, open-billed stork and a pygmy goose with young to the list.
Marabou breed in the dry season, when shrinking pools make food easy to find, so the colony is at its busiest just as the channels get shallow. Guests in October 2013, 2015 and 2022 all complained of low water, and in October 2018 one watched the crew climb out and push the boats through. Going by those reports, September is the safer month if the heronry is your main reason.
How often the owl turns up
Pel’s fishing owl is named after Hendrik Pel, a Dutch governor of the Gold Coast in the 1840s. It can weigh over two kilos and the male’s boom carries up to three kilometres. The operator and at least one agent talk of regular sightings. The guest reports are patchier. One party in March 2018 saw the owl every day. Another found one that October, low water and all. A birder in July 2021 got it on a morning outing with a guide called Robbie, a first after ten safaris. Back in 2013 a guide called Kenny broke off a game drive to take guests out by boat when one had been spotted.
The ten most recent reports on Expert Africa, from 2024 to mid-2026, do not mention the owl at all. Tell your guide on the first evening that you want it.
What the tick lists hide
Expert Africa has had about 20 travellers log sightings here since mid-2018. All of them saw lion, elephant and hippo. Leopard came up for 86 percent, wild dog for half, cheetah for under a third and sitatunga for one in six. Two separate parties in 2025 wrote of a lion pride with nine small cubs, and one of them counted three lionesses. A guest in May 2026 saw leopards on every drive, two cubs among them.
The same list gives white rhino at 16 percent. Ignore it. That is three sightings, all between August and October 2018. Poaching in the delta surged in 2020 and the government moved the surviving rhino out.
The water is the gamble. This is the southern end of the Okavango Delta and the flood has been weak in recent years. In 2022 the lagoon in front of camp had no water. A June 2024 guest found too little for much boating, and in November 2025 the plain in front was completely dry. Yet in September 2025 hippos were right outside the tents. Since the rebuild, one returning guest has grumbled that the vehicles now seat six where they used to seat four, and another felt the drives covered a small area. Be there on 30 September if you can: guests in 2013, 2015, 2018 and 2025 all wrote about the Independence Day evening.
A second, smaller camp called Kanana Nyana is on the same river, with four suites and an opening date of 15 October 2026. Nyana is Setswana for small.
