First mokoro of the season

The Okavango's flood arrives months after the rain that caused it. Water falling in the Angolan highlands in January takes until roughly June to push south through the panhandle and spread across the Delta. In a strong year the channels around the eastern islands hold enough depth well into the following season.

Travelling at water level

A mokoro sits perhaps fifteen centimetres above the surface. Your eye-line is level with the reeds, with the lily pads, with the reed frogs the size of a thumbnail clinging to the stems as you pass. A poler stands at the back and moves you through it almost without sound.

It is the slowest way to travel in Southern Africa and, for two hours at a time, the best. There is no engine, no dust, and nothing to look at but the water and whatever is standing in it.

An hour into the reeds you realise you have stopped talking, and so has everyone else.

Getting there

From northern Namibia the Delta is a ninety-minute light-aircraft hop rather than a full day of driving — a flight low enough to pick out elephant paths cut through the floodplain before you land on a strip of packed sand.