Mashatu opens its mid-winter season with a focus on walking, cycling and horseback safaris alongside its renowned photographic hides in Botswana’s Northern Tuli.
Mashatu has turned attention to the active and photographic side of its programme as the mid-winter season settles over the Northern Tuli in eastern Botswana. Across its 42,000-hectare private reserve, the operator is highlighting walking safaris, cycling expeditions, horseback rides and its well-known photographic hides, giving visitors ways to explore the wilderness that reach beyond the traditional game drive.
The reserve sits in a remote corner of Botswana where the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers meet, at the point where Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe come together. This is the heart of the Northern Tuli Game Reserve, a landscape of wide plains, grassland, riverine forest, rocky hills, marshland and sandstone ridges. Eight perennial and non-perennial rivers run through the property, shaping terrain that supports some of the largest elephant herds found on any private game reserve in Africa, more than 350 recorded bird species and strong populations of predators.
A Botswana safari at Mashatu is built around three experience categories: luxury, adventure and wellness. The adventure offering is what sets the reserve apart for many guests. Rather than viewing wildlife only from a vehicle, visitors can walk with trained guides, cycle across open country, or follow game trails on horseback. Each of these draws people closer to the ground, the tracks and the smaller detail of the bush that is easy to miss from a moving vehicle.
Photography has long been central to the Mashatu name. The reserve operates a set of purpose-built photographic hides that place guests at eye level with animals coming to water and feed. These hides have earned recognition among wildlife photographers, and the clear light and open country of the winter months make this a natural time to use them. For those who want to work seriously on their craft, the combination of predictable wildlife movement and low, sunken vantage points offers something few reserves can match.
Accommodation is spread across six distinct properties, so guests can choose a style of stay that suits their group and pace. As a Botswana safari lodge collection, the options range from the five-star villas of Euphorbia Mashatu to the fourteen luxury suites of Mashatu Lodge, the eight tented suites of Tuli Safari Lodge on the banks of the Limpopo River, and the more intimate Mashatu Tent Camp with its eight private tents. For families and private groups, the exclusive-use Kolokolo Safari Home and Shalimpo Safari Home, the latter set near the tri-border confluence, allow a whole party to take over a single property.
The spread of these Botswana lodges means the reserve can host everyone from photographers and honeymooners to multi-generational family trips, without the sense of a crowded camp. Because the land is privately managed, guiding teams have the freedom to tailor drives, walks and rides to what guests want to see and do, and to linger at sightings rather than move on to make room for other vehicles.
Reaching Mashatu is more straightforward than its remote setting suggests. Guests can fly in through the Limpopo Valley Airfield within the reserve, or travel by road from Johannesburg in around six and a half hours, crossing at the Pont Drift Border Post. That accessibility, paired with the scale of the wilderness on the other side of the border, is part of what has kept the Northern Tuli on the map for repeat safari travellers.
The mid-winter period brings cool, dry days and thinning vegetation, which opens up sightlines and concentrates animals around the reserve’s water sources. It is a practical time to combine several ways of exploring, a morning walk or cycle followed by an afternoon in a hide, or a horseback ride out across the plains at the start of the day. For visitors weighing up where to travel in southern Africa this season, Mashatu offers a rounded and active version of the classic safari.
To plan a stay or read more about the reserve and its experiences, visit https://mashatu.com/
About Mashatu
Mashatu is a privately owned 42,000-hectare game reserve in the Northern Tuli region of eastern Botswana, set where the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers meet at the meeting point of Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The reserve is home to large elephant herds, more than 350 bird species and a wide range of predators, and offers game drives, walking safaris, cycling, horseback safaris and photographic hides across six distinct properties.
Media Contact
Mashatu
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +267 74 988 822
Website: https://mashatu.com/