People in eastern Botswana are unused to tourists and their habits. Many officials and policeman cling to outdated ideas of infiltration by apartheid regime saboteurs. The golden rule, as in any other tourist-unfrequented place in the world, is to first greet people politely and then ask their permission to go here or there and to take a photograph. Once they are given your respect, people are friendly and helpful. The tourists who come to Botswana are wildlife tourists, who also take in neighbouring parts of Southern Africa.
Cultural tourism remains almost unexploited.
The only internationally recognisable brand-name is Bushman . Apart from conjuring up imprecise and distorted 'ethnic' images, the name is intensely embarrassing for the government of Botswana - because it denotes the neglected poorest of the rural poor in a free enterprise democratic society. Historically-oriented tourism, on the other hand, poses no such threat. All of these overlap with neighbouring countries, but there are also great narratives of Botswana history with which the world needs first to be familiarized by books and films. For an indication of how a historically-oriented tour by car might be planned, see the Missionaries' Road supplement to this page.