The Savute Channel in northern Botswana has baffled explorers, geographers and tourists for generations. 

Over the years, journals describing the area range from a wildlife-rich Garden of Eden with plentiful water and wildlife, to a dry and arid desert. 

What is it about this beguiling channel that causes such contradictory reports?  

The Savute Channel is a vital link between the Linyanti and Savuti marshes in Chobe National Park. It's one of the many tributaries of the Okavango River that extends from the mighty Okavango Delta from northern Botswana.

I was fortunate to visit the area in late 2021 on a trip south from Livingstone to Cape Town. The channel when I passed through was absolutely bone-dry - just a bed of very deep sand with trees lining each edge; clear evidence of the banks of an old river. 

For a long time, the ephemeral nature of the river baffled scientists and geologists alike. It was enshrined in local folklore and myth. Today, we have a slightly better understanding of how we think the channel comes to exist.

Savute is controlled by a phenomenon that has only recently been fully understood. Botswana lies on a number of tectonic plates which move around ever so slightly with the earth's magma movements. 

Hundreds of small earth tremors occur annually and it is the result of these these tremors and movements that the very finely-balanced Savute Channel comes to be blocked at its source in the Linyanti swamp. As northern Botswana is made up of deep sand, the tremors are very rarely felt by us.

A single tremor may cause the ground at the source of the channel to be forced upwards, blocking the water flow. But, equally, it is the same forces that open the channel up again and transform the wilderness into a lush paradise.

In 2010 the channel was opened up and the water began to flow after 30 years of drought, flooding the Savute Marsh and creating a magical ecosystem for wildlife. But then, as quickly as it began, the channel dried up again in 2016. Today, the channel is dry and acts as one of the networks of tracks which the safari lodge game vehicles use to navigate through the park.

During the good times when the channel is flowing, the Savute is bountiful with huge herds of elephant, numerous predators and giant herds of plains game. When it's dry, wildlife is more scarce, apart from a few prides of die-hard lions trapped there by territorial tradition.

While the mystery of the Savute Channel appears to be solved, the charm of the area is far from diminished.