Heritage Tours in Botswana

Botswana’s heritage sites sit almost entirely outside the safari circuit, along the eastern corridor and in the far northwest, which means seeing them is a routing decision rather than an addition. Tsodilo Hills holds over 4,500 rock paintings and UNESCO World Heritage status, and the story of how the country came to exist runs through Old Palapye, Serowe and a monument in Gaborone. Several sites need permission arranged in advance.

Why Heritage Needs Its Own Routing

The practical problem first, because it decides whether any of this is possible.

Botswana’s safari areas are in the north and west, reached by charter flight from Maun or Kasane. Its heritage sites are overwhelmingly in the east, along the corridor between Gaborone and Francistown, or in the far northwest near the Namibian border.

Those are different trips. A fly-in Okavango and Chobe itinerary will not pass a single heritage site, and adding one means either a separate overland leg or building the trip around the eastern corridor instead.

The exception is Tsodilo, which sits in the northwest and suits an overland route toward the Panhandle and Namibia.

For travellers combining Botswana with South Africa or Zimbabwe overland, the eastern sites are on the way rather than a detour, which is the easiest way to include them.

The Tuli Block in the southeast is the piece that makes such a trip work as more than a museum circuit. It is a strip of private reserves along the Limpopo holding elephant and leopard across sandstone country unlike anywhere else in Botswana, it is malaria free, and it sits within reach of Lepokole and the eastern historic sites. A heritage route through the east with two or three nights at Tuli is a genuinely good trip rather than a consolation for missing the Delta.

The Rock Art Sites

Botswana’s deepest history and its most internationally recognised heritage.

Tsodilo Hills in the far northwest holds over 4,500 rock paintings across roughly ten square kilometres, one of the highest concentrations anywhere in the world, earning it the name Louvre of the Desert and UNESCO World Heritage status. Four quartzite hills rise from flat Kalahari, and the archaeological record documents human activity over at least 100,000 years. Guides are compulsory and the hills are an active sacred site for San and Hambukushu communities.

Manyana southwest of Gaborone is the only substantial rock art site in the south, with five painted cliff areas including four yellow giraffes, dated between roughly 1100 and 1700 AD. It is fenced and access is only through the custodian.

Matsieng north of Gaborone is a sandstone slab with deep natural holes and over a hundred engraved footprints, a Tswana creation site still used for rain-making ceremonies.

Lepokole Hills near Bobonong hold San paintings, some recording the retreat into those hills from encroaching settlement.

The Story of Modern Botswana

Three sites tell one continuous story and are best visited in order.

Old Palapye, known as Phalatswe, was Khama III’s capital for thirteen years before water ran short. On leaving for Serowe he had the settlement burned, sparing only the London Missionary Society church he had commissioned, whose roofless red-brick shell still stands at the foot of the Tswapong Hills.

Serowe is where the Bangwato moved and remain, holding the Khama III Memorial Museum in a restored Victorian house, and the royal cemetery on Thathaganyana Hill where Khama III and Sir Seretse Khama are buried. Permission is needed to visit the graves.

The Three Dikgosi Monument in Gaborone completes it, with bronze figures of Khama III, Sebele I and Bathoen I, the chiefs whose petition to Britain kept Bechuanaland out of Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company and made an independent Botswana possible.

Shoshong, Khama’s capital before Phalatswe, sits roughly 80 kilometres west and completes the sequence for anyone with time. Standing at all three in order gives a clear picture of a people moving twice within a generation because the springs ran dry, which is as good an introduction to the constraints of this country as any national park offers.

Stone Ruins and the Deeper Past

The northeast holds a chapter almost nobody visits.

Domboshaba near Masunga is a dry stone-walled hilltop site occupied toward the end of the Great Zimbabwe period, functioning as the seat of a regional ruler within Butua, the Kalanga state whose capital was at Khami near Bulawayo. Walls stand up to 1.8 metres across more than eight hectares, worked around existing boulders and trees.

It was the first archaeological site ever excavated in Botswana, and the dig recovered Chinese celadon porcelain, which had arrived through Indian Ocean trade networks as a gift to whoever ruled there.

An annual Kalanga cultural festival at the foot of the hill, usually around the end of September, is the largest event of its kind in the country.

Northeastern Botswana holds a scatter of comparable stone towns, most of which lost their connection to living memory and now sit under scrub, largely unexcavated. Domboshaba is the exception, and the festival is part of why. Culture that is actively practised tends to hold onto its places, and culture that stops being practised tends to lose them.

Sites That Need Permission

This catches people out and is worth listing plainly.

Manyana is fenced and gazetted, with entry only through the custodian. Turning up expecting to walk in will not work.

Old Palapye requires approaching the village headman before visiting, since this is community land regarded as holding ancestral force, and some areas are closed entirely.

The Serowe royal cemetery needs permission, with accounts differing on whether to ask at the chief’s office or the police station near the kgotla.

Lepokole historically required asking the headman, with a community tourism project developed since, so check the current position locally.

Kubu Island is managed by the Gaing O Community Trust, with camping booked through them.

Tsodilo requires guides on all three hills, charged separately per hill.

Museums

The reliable option when access to a site is uncertain, and worth visiting in their own right.

The National Museum and Art Gallery in Gaborone holds traditional crafts, southern African fine art and archaeological material.

The Khama III Memorial Museum at Serowe chronicles the family and the route to independence, with a room dedicated to the writer Bessie Head.

The Supa Ngwao Museum at Francistown covers Kalanga culture and local history in historic buildings.

The Phuthadikobo Museum at Mochudi covers Bakgatla history and pairs naturally with Matsieng nearby.

The Nhabe Museum in Maun covers Ngamiland history, art and culture in a building that served as a wartime surveillance post, and is the one museum that fits into a standard safari itinerary.

Frequently Asked Questions About Heritage Tours in Botswana

Booking Your Botswana Trip

The safari companies and tour operators listed on this website put trips like this together for a living and know which camps, guides and routes actually deliver. We are an independent guide to Botswana; we do not book or sell tours ourselves.

When you are ready, arrange your safari, tour or holiday with one of the recognised operators listed here. Tell them your dates and what matters most, and a real person, not a form, will handle the itinerary, park bookings and logistics for you.