After getting the alternator fixed, we left Maun and headed back to Gaborone, a 10 hour drive. We drove strait, stopping only once in the Kalahari Desert. The Kalahari is a high ranking member of the Great Deserts of the World, which include the Gobi of Mongolia, the Atacama of Chile, the Sahara of Africa, the Arabian of the Middle East, the Outback of Australia, the Mojave in the American Southwest, the Chihuahuan of Mexico, the Thar in India, and the Patagonia of Argentina. This place is breathtaking. Neither of us wanted to leave. I just wanted to drive strait into the heart of it, pitch a tent, and never leave. There is a mystical quality to this place, a harmony of silence & tranquility that can never be sold or stolen. Eternal solitude. The sky is massive and the horizon infinite. I made mental notes of some villages I’d like to come back to. Closer to my bliss.
But the Kalahari is not a true desert. It has vegetation and it does get some annual rainfall. It’s not a pure sandbox as is the Arabian. But it forms one of Africa’s prominent geographical features and, along with the Sahara, makeup 27% of Africa’s land mass.
Exhausted, we pulled into Mokolodi just before midnight. The truck had a wicked case of the 5 o’clock shadow of mud and needed a shave badly.
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