Kalahari Desert drives, horseback safaris and stargazing

When you stay at Bagatelle Kalahari Game Ranch, you’ll get the complete desert experience. As well as sleeping among the dunes in our luxury chalets, you’ll spend your days exploring them with our expert guides. Guests love our morning and afternoon safaris through the 10,000-hectare reserve in the southern Kalahari, which features some of the highest dunes in the region, as well as salt flats and valleys dotted with acacia trees.

Along the way, your guide will point out various types of native vegetation and wildlife. Look out for desert animals, which can include everything from kudus and oryx to zebras, giraffes and ostriches, as well as the family of cute meerkats who live around the ranch. You’ll also get to visit three orphaned cheetahs, Ralf, Etosha and Tuano, who are cared for in a 12-hectare enclosure near the ranch – we work with the Cheetah Conservation Fund to protect the area’s endangered big cats.

To really immerse yourself in the desert, you can also ride one of our well-trained American Quarter (cowboy) horses through the dunes with a guide. This gives you a unique perspective you just don’t get in a car. Our stargazing experience completes the day. After dinner, join a local astronomer and peer through one of the state-of-the-art telescopes to see planets, star clusters and distant galaxies. The clear, star-filled skies above the Kalahari are magical.