Grasslands Bushman Lodge, Botswana were awarded the Country winner for Luxury Safari Retreat category at the World Luxury Hotel awards in Cape Town last week.  A member of Footsteps in Africa who pioneer an affordable safari experience in Botswana with a circuit of independent camps and lodges and a 'one stop shop' centralised reservations system.  They are committed to providing a quality, rewarding, yet affordable safari experience for guests, while being acutely aware of both their impact, and that of their guests, on the environment.

Grassland Bushman Lodge is situated to the west of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana on a private wildlife reserve of some 15 000 hectares.  The Central Kalahari has been the home of the De Graaf family for seven generations – since Cecil John Rhodes, eager to create a buffer between his interests in central Africa and German settlers encroaching from the west, granted vast swathes of the Kalahari to Boer ranchers. The Germans duly arrived and faced with the task of stopping their westward migration, the Boers brought out their daughters.

Mission accomplished! With the courtliness and hospitality peculiar to people living in deep solitude, they love to share their passion and first-hand knowledge of the Kalahari with their guests. The lodge is a family concern, and the rest of the staff is made up entirely of San (Bushmen), from a clan that has lived and worked alongside the family for many generations.

The lodge accommodates up to 16 guests and includes two family units with en-suite facilities. The lodge is well appointed, with a swimming pool for the hot desert days, and overlooks a waterhole which attracts a large variety of wildlife.

At Grassland Bushman Lodge, the focus of our activities are:

•An authentic, comprehensive San (Bushmen) experience. Distinct from most lodge-based San activities, the San experience at Grasslands takes place not with a couple of 'hunters', imparting their knowledge, but with the entire clan on a genuine foraging expedition. One becomes immediately sensitized to the important role every member of the clan plays, and how the tasks are performed, and the opportunities exploited, by the different age and gender groups within the clan. Fascinating to western eyes, and instructive to witness a culture in which people become responsible and make real contributions to the common weal from a very early age.
•Day and night drives. The desert fauna and flora is very different to that of the Okavango and Chobe, and driving across the vast plains of the Kalahari by both day and night reveals the richness of this extraordinary environment, in which water is plentiful, but always beneath the earth's surface.
•The unique predator rehabilitation centre. Surrounding ranchers experience constant conflict with the Kalahari's many predators. The De Graafs offer an alternative to the traditional response of shooting predators on sight – they will capture them and bring them into their 10-acre enclosures behind the lodge. Consequently they offer guests the unique opportunity to walk with Cape Hunting Dogs, and experience first-hand these fascinating creatures' expression of curiosity, and of superb viewing of the legendarily large Kalahari lion in their natural environment.