Sitting here, trailing my fingers through the translucent water, I feel detached from the modern world. I can hear the voice of my Botswanan guide describing the surroundings as he deftly poles the mokoro through the winding reed passages and around the bushy tufts of grasses protruding from the wetlands of the Okavanga Delta.

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It is so quiet here that his soft nasal voice comes to me as a whisper on the light breeze. He tells of flowers, plants, birds, animals indigenous to the area and of the ebb and flow of the delta itself. He talks of his family tradition of hand carving mokoros, a type of dugout canoe, from a single log into its long, narrow, low-sided shape.