All products featured on Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
I’m lazing on a mattress in the middle of an ancient salt pan when a sparkly meteor zips through the sky. Another shooting star follows, then another. It’s like the heavens triggered a confetti cannon—but I know the source of this marvel. It’s the Delta Aquariid meteor shower, an annual July to August spectacle that’s most active in the southern hemisphere. And I’ve snagged an enviable seat to watch it: Botswana’s far-flung Makgadikgadi Pans.
At over 11,500 square miles (nearly the size of Maryland), this ivory patchwork of salt, sand, and clay is one of the planet’s largest salt flats. The secluded escape dazzles with inky, light-pollution-free skies, and safari operator Desert Delta makes these nightscapes reachable via Makgadikgadi Pans sleepouts, available for Leroo La Tau lodge guests. It’s an awe-inspiring adventure complete with sunset champagne, al fresco beds, fire-cooked fare, and a helicopter ride at dawn.
The outing begins with a four-hour drive from Leroo La Tau, a collection of 12 safari suites that overlook the wildlife-rich Boteti River. It’s a rugged traverse out to the pans, yet bumpy dirt roads and windswept hair are well worth it for this blissful night enjoying my favorite wellness practice: star bathing.
Like forest bathing, star bathing—also known as mindful stargazing—centers on appreciating and tuning into your surroundings without technology. “We have stargazing, which is about identifying constellations, setting up your camera, or working out how to use your telescope, then there’s the other side, star bathing,” says Mark Westmoquette, an astrophysicist, star-bathing retreat host, and author of Mindful Thoughts for Stargazers. It’s akin to sunbathing, he notes. “I’m not taking pictures, I’m just out there enjoying being in the light of the stars.”
The mental health benefits abound, from enhanced mindfulness to stress relief and grounding, he explains. Over the past decade, the Office of Astronomy for Development, a joint initiative between the International Astronomical Union and the South African National Research Foundation, has even introduced programming that uses nightscapes to aid mental health for vulnerable groups, such as refugees or children recovering from trauma.
For me, though, star bathing is about regaining perspective. Comprehending the grander universe—like those “shooting stars” in the Makgadikgadi Pans, which are actually comet debris that likely stem from the formation of our solar system—grounds me in what really matters. The practice became particularly handy during the pandemic, when the stress of a two-times postponed wedding, and fears about sustaining a travel-writing career sans travel, became all-consuming. “When we start to see things in the broader perspective, especially when we look up and see the whole picture, it can help,” says Westmoquette.
.jpg)
My pandemic star bathing practice was a hodgepodge of rooftop planet-watching, astronomy documentary binges, and road trips to dark-sky destinations. Now that travel has resumed, and astrotourism is skyrocketing in popularity, jetsetters have myriad ways to partake.
In coastal California, adventure-meets-luxury outpost Alila Ventana Big Sur hosts cosmic yoga that concludes with Shavasana beneath the stars. Guests at Utah’s secluded Amangiri can soak up the southwest U.S.’s lauded nightscapes via the suites’ stargazing beds and sky terraces. Safari goers have an array of star-bathing posts to choose from, too, whether it’s sky beds at Little Kulala in Sossusvlei, Namibia, stargazing tents with a soundtrack of distant lions at Asilia’s Olakira Camp in Tanzania’s Serengeti, or my enriching sky-gazing perch in Botswana.
Out here, among the parched terrain and bejeweled nighttime frescoes, the Makgadikgadi Pans feel like another planet—but they also play a major role in life here on Earth. Research published in 2019 suggests the mother of today’s modern humans may have originated in the Makgadikgadi basin some 200,000 years ago. At the time, the region was covered by an enormous lake with plentiful animals and vegetation that sustained humankind’s hunter-gatherer ancestors.
Our night’s sleep-out landscape looks nothing like it did in the Stone Age, but the same can’t be said for the twilight fresco, which is like a window to the past. “The night sky has been largely the same since the beginning of humanity,” says Westmoquette. “There’s something deeply connecting about that.”
Similar to forest bathing, star bathing doesn’t require deep knowledge of history or astronomy. “You can just appreciate [the night sky] as a thing of beauty,” he says. Yet, as I’ve found throughout dozens of starlit adventures, even a slight bit of context can up the awe.
Take the Milky Way, our home galaxy, which is a treat to witness anywhere given light pollution now hides it from one-third of humanity. Out in Botswana’s remote salt flats, the skies are dark enough to not only see the spiral galaxy, but to peer into its glowing core—and peer I do.
.jpg)
As I cocoon into my sleepout bed, a toasty bivouac sack stuffed with blankets, I gaze up at the Milky Way, then recall trivia from my pandemic astro-documentary binge. Our solar system may feel impossibly large—humans have yet to step foot on another planet—but it’s merely one of thousands of planetary systems in our massive galaxy. What’s more, scientists believe some two trillion galaxies may exist in the observable universe, and who knows how many more beyond that.
I let my mind explore this labyrinth of night-sky wonder, knowing full well I’ll board the morning helicopter without a wink of sleep. I feel tinier as each meteor passes, and even smaller as the Milky Way core brightens. Yet, true to the art of star bathing, I also feel more alive.