Kalahari Desert Facts

Some random interesting facts about the Kalahari Desert are provided below:

The Kalahari desert is the place where the British television series “Meerkat Manor” was produced.

The Taa language, spoken by less than 5,000 people in the Kalahari desert is the language with the most vowels and consonants.

The name of the desert, Kalahari, means “large thirst” in Tswana language.

The temperatures in the desert are extreme, summer being very hot, while in winter temperature can go even below 0 degree Celsius.

The only permanent river that flows through the desert is the Okavango River.

The Kalahari desert is home to many big cats including lions, cheetahs or leopards.

The Kalahari is the southernmost desert in Africa.

It is the 6th biggest desert by area on Earth and the second biggest in Africa after the Sahara.

There is a population of Bushmen in the desert. They are mostly hunters-gatherers.

Unlike other deserts, the dunes in the Kalahari are not wandering.

Thousands of years ago, the Kalahari Desert was thriving with life and there were many lakes there. Today, in the place of these lakes, large salt pans remain, as is the case of Makgadikgadi Pan, the remains of the once huge Lake Makgadikgadi. Another big pan is the Nxan pan.

The popular game, Mario Kart features a track named Kalimari Desert. This track was inspired by the Kalahari Desert.

Once a massive irrigation scheme was proposed to make parts of the Kalahari Desert suitable for agriculture, but nothing resulted.

In 1885, the explorer Guillermo Farini published a book about some rock formations that he assumed were ruins of a city. Subsequently other explorers wanted to visit Farini’s ruins, thus a quest to find the Lost City of the Kalahari started. Nothing was found and it is believed that Farini saw some natural rock formations in South Africa.