Although called a desert, The Kalahari Desert is not in fact a desert at all! At least not by the normal standards for classifying a desert. A more correct term would be a 'thirstland', as no-where in the Kalahari Desert sands is the rainfall less than 150mm a year.

The reason it was called a desert goes back to the first impressions from explorers such as Thomas Baines, David Livingstone and Jacobus Coetse Jansz (the first recorded white man who visited the area in 1760) They reported an arid interior, deep sand cover, an absence of standing water and sand dunes – albeit covered in trees. The area covered by the Kalahari Desert stretches from Brokspits in South Africa right up through Botswana nearly to Maun, and across eastwards into Namibia.