The top tourist attraction for Botswana is its twelve unspoilt wildlife and expansive well-preserved reserves and parks. The country is not highly populated and allows for up to 17%, nearly 100 000 square kilometers, of the country to be set aside for environmental and nature conservation. Any nature lover travelling to Botswana will be spoilt for choice. From the green, waterways of the Okavango Delta in the north to the red desert Kalahari dunes to the south, every area has its own splendor, wildlife, and attraction. To add excitement to the adventure is that most of the camps in the parks are not fenced off, allowing visits from all types of animals wandering through the camps, or scavenging for scraps.

The country aims to promote low volume, high cost tourism that provides for a relaxed private safari holiday free of the ever-present crowds so often found in Africa.

The website of the Botswana Tourism Board lists all the different attractions per region. It includes art galleries, places of interest in the towns and cities, but the main attractions still remain the wildlife and game reserves. The top attractions are:

Okavango Delta Swamps
This is the country's main tourist attraction. The Okavango Delta is the largest in the world and is a result of the Okavango River and others flowing inland and forming a sea in the Kalahari Desert. Every year, heavy rainfall results in the Okavango River breaking its banks and creating what is known as the Okavango Swamps. This area is home to a vast amount and variety of animals, birds, fish, and plant life, with some of the most spectacular sunset that will stay with you for a lifetime.

Makgadikgadi Pans
This national park can be found about halfway between Maun and Nata in the north of Botswana on the Francistown road. All the roads in the park are rough, and can only be travelled with a 4-wheel drive vehicle.
There are two camp sites. Njuca Hills overlooks the wide, vast plains which are completely undeveloped. At the start of the rain season this is the perfect spot to see the migration of the wildebeest and zebra.The camp at Kumaga is on the banks of the Boteti River, not flowing since 1992 due to the drought experienced in the region.
The pans are filled with water during the rainy season from mid-November to April or May; this dry land is then transformed and great sheets of water can be seen. This attracts a huge variety of water birds and triggers the migrations of wildebeest and zebra. The area becomes virtually impossible to travel to with a vehicle and can best be experienced from the air.

Nxai Pan National Park
Close to the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park is the 2 578 square kilometer Nxai Pan National Park. The best point in this park is the watering hole, about two kilometers from the entrance. There is a large grassy plain, with the umbrella-like thorn trees dotted all over, and you will see giraffe, lion, impala, kudu, fascinating birdlife and great numbers of springbok, as well as jackal, bat-eared fox and numerous amount of smaller creatures. Once the rains have started, elephant, gemsbok, and zebra migrate to the area.

Chobe National Park
The second largest national park in Botswana at 10 566 square kilometers, has one of the greatest concentration of game in Africa. This alone provides the safari experience of a lifetime. The park has four eco systems; Serondela is an area with lush plains and dense forests in the extreme north-east; the Savuti Marsh in the west about fifty kilometers north of Mababe gate; the Linyanti Swamps in the north-west and the hot dry hinterland in between.
The Chobe is famous for its large elephant population; these elephant are also the largest of all living elephants today.
The Chobe River, which forms the northern border of the park rises in the northern highlands of Angola. Together with the Okovango and the Zambezi, the course of the Chobe is determined by the fault lines of the Great Rift Valley, and these three rivers also carry more water than all the other rivers in Southern Africa.

Moremi Game Reserve
Moremi is described as one of the most beautiful wildlife reserves in Africa. The combination of Mopani woodland and acacia forests, floodplains and lagoons allows a great diversity of plant and animal life makes Moremi a truly spectacular area to visit.

Central Kalahari Game Reserve
At 52 800 square kilometers, this park is larger than Switzerland or Denmark, and is the second largest game reserve in the world. The Central Kalahari Game Reserve is situated right at the centre of Botswana and is characterised by its vast open plains, ancient river beds, and salt pans. The north has many sand dunes with a large variety of trees and shrubs, and the south has more wooded areas, while the central area turns to flat bushveld area and Mopani forests to the south and east. The game would include giraffe, brown hyena, warthog, wild dog, cheetah, leopard, lion, blue wildebeest, eland, gemsbok, kudu, red hartebeest, and springbok.

Tsodilo Hills
These hills rise dramatically from the dramatically flat and barren land of the western Kalahari, on the banks of Panhandle. The quartzite cliffs of the four hills form a line and the largest rises hill is 410 meters above the surrounding savanna plains. The hills were described by the famous Sir Laurens van der Post in his ‘The Lost World of the Kalahari'. The San Bushmen have lived in this area for thousands of years. Archaeological sites have determined that these hills have been occupied by humans at least 10 000 years ago already.
The rock paintings found in the Tsodilo Hills are unique in their style as well as the occurrence of certain images.