We visited Maun with our family in December. Located near the eastern edge of the Okavango delta, it possesses a still, quiet beauty.
We took a short plane ride over the delta. As I look again at the images taken that day, I am struck by the fractal quality of the images.
How do you assess the “fractalness” of an image? I suppose that it has to do with the degree to which the image can be described by a self-similar patterns, hints of the same regularity as you zoom closer in. It looks like natural landscapes exhibit fractal qualities only over limited scales — perhaps 2 or 3 dimensions at most.
Maybe the echo of patterns at different scales hints at complex interactions of life in the delta.
Does it matter? The beauty is simply indescribable.
Gayatri Sethi (my wife, at gayatrisethi.com and a citizen of Botswana) reminds me that the Okavango Delta has been a World Heritage site for a few years http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1432. More fractal beauty is at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1432/gallery/