Jacks Camp

There are safari camps, and then there's Jacks Camp. Sitting on the edge of one of Africa's most otherworldly landscapes, the vast, bleached silence of the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, this incredible camp place has been doing luxury differently since 1992.

Each of the nine tents is essentially a collector's study that happens to have a plunge pool. Persian rugs, mahogany campaign furniture, paraffin lanterns, hand-carved beds, Natural History Museum curiosities; it's the kind of space that makes you want to stay in as much as go out. At 270 square metres, you'll have room to do both.

The heart of camp is the mess tent: a 36-seat dining table salvaged from an 1820s officer's mess, a library, an antique pool table, and every afternoon, a nomadic Persian tea tent that materialises like a mirage. Outside, the only swimming pool pavilion of its kind in Africa offers shade and cold water when the desert has had its way with you.

And then there's the bush. Jacks Camp is the place to see brown hyena; fewer than 8,000 exist on Earth. Alongside aardwolves, bat-eared foxes, honey badgers, black-maned lions, and aardvarks, you can visit the habituated meerkats, one of the only places in the world to view these wonderful and inquisitive animals.  Guided walks with Zu'hoasi Bushmen offer something rarer still: a way of reading this landscape that's thousands of years old.

The Makgadikgadi is stark, strange, and completely unforgettable. Jack's Camp is the only way to see it properly.