The gateway town, used properly

Kasane: the town at Chobe's gate, and how to use it

Name: Chobe National Park
Address: Botswana

Kasane is the only full-service town on Chobe's edge, and it is unusually close to the action: fuel, banks, supermarkets, the DWNP regional office, the hospital and the airport all sit within about 7 km of Sedudu Gate. That makes the Riverfront easy and Savuti deceptive, because the last pump, shop and cash machine for the interior are all here.

If you only want the answer

Draw pula in cash at an ATM on President Avenue, fill the tank and every jerry can at Shell or Puma, buy food at Spar, Choppies, Shoprite or Woolworths, then drive the 7 km to Sedudu Gate and pay there: P270 per non-resident adult per day and P115 for a foreign car or P30 for a Botswana rental, under the April 2022 tariff. A Riverfront day visit needs no booking, but any night inside the park needs a campsite voucher arranged weeks or months ahead with the private operator, never at the gate. For Savuti, Linyanti or Nogatsaa, carry all fuel, water and firewood for the round trip.

Kasane in brief: a whole town within 7 km of the gate

Kasane stretches along the Chobe River and the A33 at the park's north-eastern corner, with President Avenue as its spine. The town centre is 6.8 km by road from Sedudu Gate, the airport 5.6 km, and the Kazungula Bridge into Zambia 18 km to the east (all routed on OpenStreetMap, 4 October 2026). That is why a Riverfront day can start ten minutes after you leave the supermarket car park.

The whole town is outside the national park, whatever some hotel websites and booking sites say. Chobe Safari Lodge describes itself as a 10-minute drive from the park entrance, and the Pangolin Chobe Hotel puts the boundary a few hundred metres away; the only permanent lodge on the Riverfront inside the park is Chobe Game Lodge. That matters for your wallet: every game drive or cruise from a Kasane hotel enters the park and pays a park fee per entry.

Use Kasane as a working afternoon before your first night in the park. The list of errands is short, the shops are on one road, and everything you forget here has to come from here again, because the Riverfront tracks and the Savuti sand have no shops at all.

Fuel, supermarkets and pula: the President Avenue run

Provisioning in Kasane is easy, and most of it happens on President Avenue. OpenStreetMap lists Shell and Puma filling stations on President Avenue and the Matete gas station on Chilwero Road in the Plateau area, plus Spar, Choppies, Shoprite and Woolworths in the Shoprite complex. Fuel-station opening hours, round-the-clock diesel and card acceptance at the pumps are not published anywhere we found, so fill up in daylight and carry cash as a backup.

Money is the errand that catches people out. The gate at Sedudu takes cash in pula, and card machines at Botswana's park gates are widely described as unreliable, so withdraw what you need at the ABSA, FNB, Bank Gaborone or BBS machines on President Avenue the day before. The fees are charged every calendar day including the day you leave: P270 per non-resident adult and P115 for a foreign-registered car under 3,500 kg, or P30 for a Botswana-registered car such as a Kasane rental, under the tariff in force since 1 April 2022. At about P13.5 to the US dollar (September 2026), P270 is roughly US$20.

There is no fuel anywhere in the park, and the interior routes are long. Kasane to Savuti is about 165 km, 70 of it deep sand, and the way on to Maun via Mababe Gate adds about 200 km more, so the jerry cans you fill here may have to carry the whole crossing.

Errand	Where in Kasane	Worth knowing
Fuel	Shell and Puma on President Avenue; Matete on Chilwero Road	No fuel inside the park
Food	Spar, Choppies, Shoprite, Woolworths, all on President Avenue	Buy for every day inside plus spare days
Cash	ABSA, FNB, Bank Gaborone, BBS on President Avenue	Gate fees in pula cash, small notes
Pharmacy	Clicks on President Avenue; a second pharmacy on Zambezi Road	Bring prescriptions from home
Police	Kasane Police Station, President Avenue	Emergency number 997 for an ambulance
4x4 hire	Chobe 4x4 (equipped Land Cruiser 79s); an Avis desk is mapped at the airport	A Botswana-registered rental pays P30 a day in the park

Listings from OpenStreetMap (Nominatim searches bounded to Kasane, 4 October 2026), which is crowd-sourced: reliable for what exists, silent on opening hours.

Permits and campsite bookings: what Kasane can and cannot do

Operators say you pay park fees at Sedudu Gate itself when you enter from Kasane. The DWNP regional office for the Chobe District is in Kasane, mapped on Airport Road in the Plateau area, and the ministry's May 2026 directory gives it as PO Box 17, Kasane, telephone +267 625 0486. The directory does not say the Kasane office takes payments, so plan to pay at the gate, and call Sedudu Gate on +267 625 0235 if you have a question about the day.

A day visit to the Riverfront needs no booking. A night inside the park does, and nobody in Kasane can conjure one on the day: every public campsite is DWNP land run by a private operator, none is booked through DWNP, and operators open availability about 12 months ahead. One booking platform says Ihaha is often booked a year in advance for the April to October peak. SKL admits nobody to Savuti or Linyanti without its voucher and a DWNP permit, and Kwalate's office for Ihaha is in Maun, not Kasane.

For general questions, DWNP's parks and reserves reservation office in Gaborone answers on +267 391 1405 and at dwnpreservations@gov.bw, per the ministry's May 2026 directory. The number +267 318 0774 printed on older pages is that office's fax, so do not wait for it to ring.

Campsite	Operator	How to book
Ihaha (Riverfront, 10 sites)	Kwalate Safaris	+267 686 5551, kwalatesafari@gmail.com; office above FNB, New Mall, Maun
Savuti (14 sites)	SKL Group of Camps	Online at sklcamps.com or reservations@sklcamps.co.bw, +267 686 5365/6
Linyanti (5 sites)	SKL Group of Camps	As Savuti; 30% non-refundable deposit to confirm
Nogatsaa (6 sites)	Ghoha Hills	reservations@ghohahills.com; enter Sedudu Gate by 15:30

Operators and contacts from their own sites, checked 4 October 2026. Park entry and vehicle fees are separate from the campsite rate and paid to DWNP at the gate.

Hospital, clinics and vehicle repairs

Kasane Primary Hospital, the government hospital, is on President Avenue, with government clinics at Plateau (Sehudi Road) and the Kasane Health Post (Kgotla Road), and the private New Hope clinic also on President Avenue. None of them publishes its services or hours online, so treat Kasane as first-line care. For an ambulance the UK government's travel advice gives 997; the nearest private hospital with 24-hour emergency care we found is The Health Bridge in Victoria Falls, across the border.

Vehicle repairs are the weak link. OpenStreetMap shows no repair workshop in Kasane, and no published listing confirms a 4x4 or tyre specialist in town. Ask your car-hire company or lodge before you head for Savuti, carry two spare tyres if you can, and check your recovery gear here, where help is a phone call away.

Boat cruises and game drives from Kasane

Kasane is where most people meet the Chobe River, on a three-hour boat cruise into the park's waters. Operators run morning cruises from about 09:30 and afternoon cruises from 15:00 to 18:00, and a Kasane booking agent lists a 2026 sunset cruise at BWP 498 per person, excluding park fees. Kalahari Holiday Tours listed a three-hour joined game drive for 6 October 2026 at P730 for two adults, also excluding park fees.

On a lodge or operator activity you pay the tour-client park fee of P190 per non-resident per day instead of the P270 self-drive rate, collected by the operator. If you drive the Riverfront yourself in the morning and cruise in the afternoon, carry your Sedudu receipt: one operator asks for it to avoid charging the fee twice. Recreational fishing happens on the river outside the park only, with a licence from any DWNP office, and the season is closed in January and February.

Kazungula, the bridge and the four-country corner

Kazungula, 18 km east of Kasane, is where four countries almost meet: Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Kazungula Bridge, 923 m long, has carried the A33 over the Zambezi into Zambia since 10 May 2021, with a one-stop border post open 06:00 to 22:00, and in February 2026 the two governments signed the agreement creating a Kazungula Bridge Authority in Kasane. The road border into Zimbabwe at Kazungula keeps 06:00 to 20:00 on the Botswana side.

Several Kasane lodges sit on the river at this end of town, among them Chobe Bakwena, Kubu Lodge and River View Lodge, and some run sundowner cruises towards the meeting point of the borders. Ignore any page that still tells you to take the Kazungula ferry; the bridge replaced it, and the April 2025 immigration list has no ferry crossing.

Day trips to Victoria Falls from Kasane

Victoria Falls is close enough for a day trip: about 95 km by road from Kasane, roughly an hour and a half plus the Zimbabwe border at Kazungula Road. Kasane operators such as Kalahari Holiday Tours sell guided and unguided Victoria Falls day trips and a Livingstone day trip on the Zambian side, and one Kasane booking agent lists a one-day Victoria Falls tour from US$90 (prices checked 4 October 2026, excluding visas).

You need whatever visa Zimbabwe or Zambia asks of your passport. Zambia's immigration department lists the Kazungula border among the posts that issue the KAZA UNIVISA, US$50 for up to 30 days in Zambia and Zimbabwe, which also allows day trips back into Botswana through the Kazungula borders. Mack Air publishes a daily 20-minute flight from Kasane at 11:00, returning from Victoria Falls at 12:00, on a page dated 2025; confirm before you build a day around it.

Where to sleep in Kasane

Kasane covers every budget, and all of it is outside the park. At the budget end, Water Lily Lodge on the river publishes rooms from US$60 to US$80 per person sharing (checked 4 October 2026), and Chobe Safari Lodge has a riverside campsite of 23 stands with power points. In the middle, Kubu Lodge, owner-managed since 1986, publishes 2026 bed-and-breakfast chalets at US$422 for two, and Chobe Safari Lodge packages with meals, a game drive and a cruise run about US$500 to US$550 per person per night in 2026 through a reseller.

At the top, Chobe Chilwero, an Abercrombie & Kent lodge in the Kasane Forest Reserve, published US$965 per person per night for October 2026 stays of one to three nights, with park fees, activities and airport transfers included, and the owner-run Chobe Bakwena on the river publishes US$644 to US$766 per person fully inclusive. Our lodges page lists every place we checked, inside and outside the park, with dated rates.

The provisioning list: what you cannot buy past Sedudu Gate

Everything on this list is Kasane or nothing. The park has no shops, no fuel and no cash machines, and the Nogatsaa operator warns there is no telephone or internet out there. Work through the list the afternoon before, sleep, and be at the gate when it opens: 06:00 from April to September, 05:30 from October to March.

Food for every day in the park, plus spare days in case you are held up by sand or a breakdown
Drinking water in bulk; treat campsite taps as washing water
Fuel: full tanks and jerry cans sized for the whole circuit, with sand consumption priced in
Pula in cash, small notes, for entry and vehicle fees for every calendar day including departure
Your campsite voucher and DWNP permit, printed
Firewood bought outside the park: collecting wood inside is banned, and Ihaha sells none
Recovery gear and spare tyres checked in town
First-aid kit and all medication from the Kasane pharmacies
Rubbish bags: carry everything out, and keep fruit out of tents because elephants walk through the unfenced campsites