Stephen Wilkes
The Boteti River Valley, Botswana, Africa
I recently traveled to Botswana to photograph an area that’s part of the Okavango Delta region.
The area I captured here is called the Boteti River Basin. Boteti is a beautiful area but is acutely suffering from a severe drought. I spent hours with a massive herd of elephants that would feed in the river basin in temperatures over 100 degrees. Many of the bull elephants were in musth, which, combined with the heat, made them especially aggressive. During musth, elephants often cool off by bathing in rivers, mud, or ponds. One bull was as curious about me as I was about him, and I loved capturing the explosive energy with which he splashed in the watering hole.
