Etosha, the salt pan Namibia's animals come to drink beside

Most safaris are a search. You drive, you look, you ask the guide to stop, you scan the bush, and sometimes you find something. Etosha works the other way. The park lies on the edge of a vast, flat, shimmering salt pan in northern Namibia, and for much of the year there is almost no surface water anywhere in it except at a scatter of springs and waterholes around the pan's edge. The animals have to come to them to drink. So the way to see Etosha is to find a waterhole, switch off the engine, and wait.

It is a patient kind of safari, and a very rewarding one. Elephants come in family groups, plastered white with the dust of the pan. Zebra and springbok come in hundreds, nervously, a few at a time. Giraffe splay their legs to reach the water. And somewhere nearby, often, are the lions that know they will come.

The great white place

The pan is the reason for everything. It covers about 4,760 square kilometres, nearly a quarter of the national park, and for most of the year it is a dry crust of salt and clay, so white and flat that it seems to dissolve into the sky at its edges. The name Etosha is usually translated from the Oshindonga language as the great white place. In good rainy seasons, water collects on the pan in a shallow sheet, and flamingos come to breed; then it dries again, and the dust blows off it in the wind.

The park around it covers about 22,270 square kilometres, and it was proclaimed a game reserve in March 1907, by the German colonial governor. The original reserve was far larger, several times the size of today's park, but its boundaries were cut back over the following decades.

Waterholes by day and by night

The park's roads link a chain of waterholes along the southern edge of the pan, some natural springs, some fed by boreholes. Each has its own character: some are known for elephant, some for lion, some for the great herds of plains game that gather on the grassland around them.

Etosha's other great pleasure is the floodlit waterhole at the rest camps. Okaukuejo, the oldest of the camps, has a waterhole on its edge, lit after dark, with a low wall and benches where guests can sit and watch through the night. It is famous for black rhino, which come down to drink after dark, sometimes several at a time, along with elephant, giraffe and lion. Halali and Namutoni, the other main camps, have floodlit waterholes too. Sitting in silence by one of them at night, watching a rhino come out of the darkness into the light, is worth any amount of lost sleep, and it costs nothing more.

When to go

The dry season, roughly from May to October, is the time for game viewing. As the bush dries out and the seasonal pools disappear, the animals concentrate around the permanent waterholes, and sightings become easier and more reliable. The later in the dry season, the hotter and dustier it gets, and the more the game crowds the water. The rainy months, from about November to April, are green and beautiful, with newborn animals and many birds, but the game spreads out across the park and is harder to find.

Holidays that go there

Etosha usually comes at the end of a Namibian journey that begins in the south, with the red dunes of Sossusvlei and the coast at Swakopmund.

Explore's thirteen-night Upgraded - Highlights of Namibia begins in Windhoek and travels by way of Mariental and the southern Kalahari to Sossusvlei and the Namib-Naukluft National Park, then the coast at Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, the seals of Cape Cross and the rock engravings of Twyfelfontein in Damaraland, before reaching Etosha National Park. It departs in April, June, July, September, October and November.

Just You's thirteen-night Namibia - Tribes and Natural Wonders, for solo travellers, takes a similar route: Windhoek, Sossusvlei, Swakopmund, Damaraland and Twyfelfontein, Etosha National Park and finally Okahandja.

G Adventures' twenty-night Southern Africa Northbound: Dunes, Deltas & Falls is a longer journey across four countries, with the Fish River Canyon, Sossusvlei, Swakopmund and Etosha National Park in Namibia, then the Okavango Delta and Chobe National Park in Botswana, and Victoria Falls, with Cape Town in its list as well. It departs in January, February, March and May.

Bring binoculars, a hat and patience. Leave the waterhole at least half an hour after you think you should: the best arrivals often come just after everyone else has driven off. Keep quiet, stay in the vehicle, and do not crowd the animals. And if you are staying at one of the camps, set an alarm for the middle of the night and go back to the waterhole. The daytime animals have gone to bed; the night belongs to the rhinos.