While game viewing is excellent year round, many people regard May to September the best time to visit Botswana. These are the winter months (and the dry season), and temperatures are moderate, there is almost no rain, and animals are concentrated around water sources.
Many experts regard the cooler months of June to August as the best time of year for a Botswana safari – the game viewing is consistently excellent, there’s virtually no rain and the risk of malaria is at its lowest.
Wildlife tends to disperse during the rainy January to April period (the green season), but several destinations offer excellent game viewing during this time, as they are in the path of migrating animals, particularly zebra. These include Chobe’s Savute region and Botswana’s Kalahari parks – Nxai Pan, Makgadikgadi Pans and the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. December is a particularly good month as many antelope drop their young during this time, which means a great chance of exceptional predator sightings.
While Botswana is a year-round birding destination, bird watchers will nevertheless find the the migrant-filled summer months of the the best time to visit Botswana for both numbers and diversity of bird species.