Place to stay · Okavango Delta
Kwara Camp
Adults-only tented camp of nine suites on a lagoon in the private Kwara Concession (NG20), north of Moremi, with game drives, boating and mokoro all year. Run by Kwando Safaris.
Kwara is Kwando Safaris’ camp on a forested island in the southern part of the Kwara Private Concession (NG20), a 175,000 hectare block that shares about 30 km of water boundary with the north side of Moremi Game Reserve. The reason to pick it over most delta camps is that it has both permanent water and a lot of dry land, so you get boats, mokoros and proper game drives in the same stay, whatever the month.
What to expect
The camp sits around a lagoon and is split in two: Kwara South with four tents and Kwara North with five. There are two pool areas, one at either end of camp. The nine suites have a lounge, indoor and outdoor showers, a bathtub and air conditioning over the bed that runs in daylight hours only. A fan covers the night.
Every drive goes out with a guide and a separate tracker, and no more than four guests to a vehicle. Off-road driving and night drives are allowed because this is a private concession. Expert Africa’s write-up says the guides here put finding predators first, more so when the vehicle is keen. If you would rather take birds and antelope as they come, say so before you arrive.
Boat trips use the Kwara and Monachira channels, and the Godikwe heronry is best from September to December. Mokoros leave from the lagoon in front of camp. Fishing is offered from March to December.
Practical details
- No guests under 18, and a minimum stay of three nights.
- Kwara airstrip is about ten minutes’ drive from camp. The flight is roughly 30 minutes from Maun and 80 from Kasane.
- Suite 5 is on one level with ramp access.
- Wi-Fi is limited.
Good to know
The camp is unfenced, and elephant and hippo use the lagoon. Kwando publishes monthly sightings reports for Kwara and its sister camp Splash, which are a better guide to what is being seen right now than any brochure.
Last updated 12 October 2026. Sources: Kwando Safaris, Kwara, Kwando Safaris, Kwara fact sheet, Expert Africa, Kwara Camp.
The cheetah who hated rain, and a lease fought in court
Kwando Safaris nearly lost this camp. It held a 15 year tourism lease on Kwara, the Tawana Land Board would not renew it, and the NG20 concession was handed straight to a company the Botswana Tourism Organisation preferred. Kwando went to the High Court. Mmegi reported two postponements under Justice Singh Walia in 2013. In 2018 the Sunday Standard named the favoured company as Promotive Investments, owned by Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, and said documents put the award at a board meeting on 22 April 2009, with no tender. None of those reports says how it ended. Kwando is still the one meeting your plane.
Two camps, then one
One American in June 2012 called Kwara the most spartan of four camps on the trip, and another a year later thought it was getting old beside Kwando’s other places. Next door was a second camp of five tents, Little Kwara. It shut for rebuilding, and a single new Kwara was due to open in September 2019. The lagoon in front only filled with the 2020 flood, after a drought season.
The grumbles have changed with the tents. More than one visitor in 2026 found it closer to a lodge than a bush camp.
Mr Special
For years the cheetah everyone knew on this concession was one male. The guides called him Special, later Mr Special, and he is in the monthly sightings notes as a familiar animal by October 2017. One day in May 2018 he walked in from the airstrip, passed between the two camps and was stalking impala when the wild dogs ambushed him. He got away.
In July 2019 he cut a reedbuck lamb from its mother, and the lamb, only days old, seemed unsure which of them was its mother. He played with it for ten or fifteen minutes before killing it. In December 2021 guides Josiah and See tracked him for eight kilometres through drizzle and found him in thick bush. He hated getting wet. In February 2022 a wandering male turned up in the Bat-eared Fox area and was found dead the next day with bite marks in his neck. Special was a hundred yards off.
By April 2024 new males had pushed him west, and by June the notes call the territory one he used to hold. By August a coalition of two males was feeding where he once left his scent. About three in four guests who log their sightings still see cheetah.
Forty-nine dogs in a day
The same logs put wild dog at two guests in three. Dens are what change the odds, and the notes record them between May and August, with pups coming above ground in June. In July 2019 guides followed thirteen adults home to fourteen pups and, with a second pack already seen, counted 49 dogs in a day. A German guest in August 2012 arrived just after the pack had left its den and never saw a dog.
The year the roads went under
A German guest in June 2026 was told the camp had not seen so much water in over 40 years. That figure is one traveller’s report, but others that June and July describe high water, rough roads and animals that were hard to reach. One woman had to leave the vehicle and cross a wooden bridge on foot at night. The boats did better. They run down the channels into Moremi waters, usually on a double-decker that one couple called almost silent. For the Godikwe heronry trip, a guest in August 2026 said to take insect repellent.
