11-Day Namibia Desert and Remote North Fly-in Safari

A full day out on the reserve, six to eight hours with a picnic lunch on the way: red dunes, gravel plains, mountain ranges and grassland, one of the most beautiful stretches of the Namib and one of the emptiest.

After dark the sky here is among the darkest in Africa, and the camp's star beds are there for anyone who wants to sleep under it.

A short hop of about twenty minutes over the sand sea to &Beyond Sossusvlei Desert Lodge, on a private reserve of star dunes and desert mountains.

The lodge's activities begin the same afternoon. Two nights here, fully inclusive.

The dunes. Sossusvlei itself, a climb of Big Daddy, and Deadvlei with its nine-hundred-year-old camelthorn skeletons on cracked white clay, plus Sesriem Canyon, only two metres wide in places. Star dunes with as many as five crests rise three hundred metres here, in the oldest desert on earth.

The reserve fills the rest of the stay: a nature drive, a guided walk, quad biking, San rock paintings and the petrified dunes, and after dark the lodge's observatory with its resident astronomer.

A scenic flight north over the sand sea and up the Atlantic coast to Swakopmund, about an hour and a half, with the old diamond workings, shipwrecks and Sandwich Harbour below. Around thirty minutes to refuel, then another hour and a half north to Möwe Bay, inside the Skeleton Coast National Park.

A transfer to Shipwreck Lodge, in the dunes above one of the most remote coastlines on earth: cold water, fog, and more than a thousand wrecks along the shore. Two nights here, fully inclusive.

The camp's excursions fill the day: an introduction to the Skeleton Coast, sandboarding on the roaring dunes, lunch on the beach, a drive up the Hoarusib River, the clay castles and quad biking.

The day ends with a sundowner drive. The lichens and succulents here live on the coastal fog, and the wildlife that makes a living in this country, from brown hyena to desert-adapted elephant in the riverbeds, is sparse and never guaranteed, which is part of what makes it remarkable.

The flight north from Möwe Bay to Hartmann's Valley, about fifty minutes, and a transfer to Serra Cafema on the banks of the Kunene River, the border with Angola.

It is one of the most remote camps in southern Africa, a green strip of trees along the river in the middle of the desert. Two nights here, fully inclusive.

A full day with the camp's guides: nature drives into Hartmann's Valley, boating on the Kunene when the water level allows, walks along the river and in the valleys, and guided quad biking on set tracks that protect the dunes.

The Himba live semi-nomadically in this country, and when they are in the area a visit can be part of the day. Himba visits are arranged through the camp with guides who know the families; nobody is photographed without being asked.

The flight east from Hartmann's Valley to Ondangwa to refuel, about an hour and twenty-five minutes, then thirty minutes on to Mokuti on Etosha's eastern edge, and a short transfer to Onguma Camp Kala.

Four suites on raised walkways around one of the busiest waterholes on the Onguma Reserve. Two nights here, fully inclusive, with two activities a day.

Two activities a day, into Etosha National Park and on the 34,000-hectare Onguma Reserve, which holds four of the Big Five. Between them, the camp's ground-level hide looks straight onto the waterhole.

Etosha holds 114 mammal species and 340 bird species around a 4,800 square kilometre salt pan, and the eastern side is flat endless plain and tree savannah, reached through the Von Lindequist Gate.

A last morning activity, then the transfer to Mokuti and the flight back to Hosea Kutako International Airport, about an hour and a half.

Check-in for international flights closes two hours before departure, so afternoon and evening flights connect best.