Most visitors to Chobe National Park stay at or near Kasane. Each day they enter the eastern Sedudu Gate and follow the fabulous trails. Most never go further west than Serondela. I must confess that on my first trip to Chobe, that was all I did also. The wildlife is so thick and the vistas so grand that nothing really pushed me further.
One day while on my second trip to Chobe, I didn’t take the dirt roadway into the Sedudu Gate, but rather stayed on the tarred roadway that leads to the Ngoma Gate. One does have one choice during the drive. About 16km after the Sedudu Entrance Gate, you will reach a crossroad dirt road. A right turn, north, would take you to the riverfront road in the Serondela area. Left leads you through the Nantanga Gate, onto the only road through Chobe, and within a kilometre to the Nantanga Pans. The road to Serondela is not clearly marked, so if you decide to take this short cut, watch your odometer closely.
This trek was a quick way to get to the lush flats near Serondela and I advise taking this drive. By doing so, we saw hyena and honey badger, animals which we seldom see near the Sedudu Gate. More importantly, taking the tarred roadway became a tease that the park looks different further west.
Elephant imitation of Beatles' Abbey Road Cover - Tar road to Ngoma - watch for animal crossings!
On the next day, we once more took the tar road. This time we continued all the way to the Ngoma Gate. Along the drive, we saw landscape that was different – open plains. We also saw quite a bit of wildlife near the roadway, including elephants, but also including species we don’t often see in the eastern park: large ground hornbills (with the prominent red throat and small antelope, very small antelope species and zebra.
A ground hornbill is a fairly rare site in eastern part of Chobe - seeing one fly is even more rare.
About 35 km down the tar roadway from Kasane you reach the Ngoma Gate. Once at the Ngoma Gate, we entered the dirt road and proceeded down to the riverfront. the initial roadway was much more crude, with deep sand. This may be due to the less traffic this part of the park sees. At the Chobe River, we took the river roadway east, actually following it all of the way back to the Sedudu Gate.
Let me tell you, this experience was fantastic. First of all, we didn’t see any other tourist except one vehicle all of the way to Serondela. Additionally, as the drive over had hinted, the landscape was different. We saw large flats leading to Nambia. We saw rocky hillsides, barren of larger vegetation, we saw several very large baobab trees.
A zebra stands as lookout for the herd on the rocky open hillside of the Ngoma side of Chobe
This difference in landscape also led to a different animal mix. We still saw giraffes, impala, kudu and hippos, but we also saw herds of sable over 50 strong. We also saw herds and singles of zebra. We also saw many more waterbok, lechwe and bushbok than on the eastern side.
A waterbok is a more common site on the Ngoma side
Chobe is a great location for seeing game. I love the vistas from the Kasane side. I will be entering Sedudu Gate many more times in my upcoming trips. Still, this was a very different park on this drive. One I really enjoyed. I probably wouldn’t have done this if my son had not insisted. I thank him for taking me to the far side.
Bottom line – Chobe is a huge park. There are areas to the south tha I must now visit someday. There may or may not be great game in these further reaches; however having now gone to the western gateway, I know that I can recommend this journey.
if you are on a self-drive safari and are going to be at Chobe NP for more than 5 days, you owe it to yourself to try a drive on the far side.
Large baobabs in open areas easy to photograph can be found west of Serandela about 15 km along the Chobe River road.
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