Namibia Grand Tour Self-Drive Safari

Windhoek to the Kalahari, 245 km, three to four hours. South out of the capital into red sand country, where long parallel dunes run for kilometres and the grass between them turns gold in the late light.

The afternoon is at leisure. Game and nature drives and guided walks can all be arranged at the lodge, and the sunset here is the reason people book the first night out of Windhoek rather than pushing straight south. Lunches are at your own arrangement.

Kalahari to Fish River Canyon, 440 km, seven to eight hours, and the longest driving day of the trip. South via Mariental and Keetmanshoop into the Karas region.

Detour to the Quiver Tree Forest and Giant's Playground on the way, where dolerite boulders sit stacked as though somebody arranged them and three-hundred-year-old aloes grow between the rocks. The Fish River Canyon is 160 km long and up to 550 metres deep, and the view from the rim at sunset is what ends the day. Lunches are at your own arrangement.

Fish River Canyon to Luderitz, 385 km, five to six hours. Take a morning look at the canyon, then head west through harsh country that opens into desert plain as you approach the coast.

The road runs via Aus, where a population of feral desert horses has survived in the Namib for roughly a century and can often be seen from the road. Luderitz itself is a German colonial town wedged between the desert and a cold Atlantic, and the wind rarely stops.

A full day in Luderitz. The essential excursion is Kolmanskop, the diamond town abandoned in the 1950s and now half buried, with sand drifted waist-deep through ballrooms and hospital wards. It is the clearest demonstration in the country of how quickly the Namib takes ground back.

The peninsula offers marine and desert wildlife, and boat trips run out toward Halifax Island, believed to be the northernmost point on the African coast where the African penguin breeds. Lunches and dinners are at the restaurants in town.

Luderitz to Sossusvlei, 505 km, seven to eight hours. Backtrack to Aus and head north via Helmeringhausen through country that empties out as you go.

You are entering the oldest desert on earth. Star dunes with as many as five crests rise three hundred metres here and rank among the largest anywhere, and the valleys between them hold clay pans left when the Tsauchab River gave up trying to reach the sea more than sixty thousand years ago. Two nights, so you get the dunes twice.

Wake early and drive to the Sesriem Gate for a full day in the dunes: Sossusvlei itself, Deadvlei with its nine-hundred-year-old camelthorn skeletons standing on cracked white clay, Dune 45, Big Daddy, Elim Dune and the Sesriem Canyon.

Return to the lodge for lunch, or take a packed lunch into the dunes and come back late afternoon for a rest. A guided Sossusvlei excursion, a hot air balloon flight over the sand sea and nature drives can all be arranged.

Sossusvlei to Swakopmund, 350 km, five to six hours. North to Solitaire, then west across the Tropic of Capricorn and through the Gaub and Kuiseb canyons onto the Namib gravel plains.

You can run in via Walvis Bay, or take the recommended detour via Ganab to the Welwitschia Plains, where individual plants have been growing for well over a thousand years, and the Moon Landscape. Swakopmund is a genuine oddity: Bavarian spires among palm trees, a lighthouse from 1902, German cake shops, and the adventure capital of Namibia all at once.

A full day on the coast. Walvis Bay's lagoon, thirty minutes south, is a Ramsar wetland holding tens of thousands of flamingos along with pelicans and a resident Cape fur seal colony at Pelican Point.

The outstanding excursion is Sandwich Harbour, where the dunes run straight into the Atlantic and which is reachable only by guided 4x4 on the tide. Other options include a dolphin and seal cruise, sea kayaking, dune quad biking and sandboarding. Lunches and dinners are at your own arrangement, in a town with more good restaurants than anywhere else in the country.

Swakopmund to Damaraland, 445 km, seven to eight hours. North along the Skeleton Coast via Henties Bay to the Cape Cross seal colony, one of the largest Cape fur seal breeding colonies in the world. Stop at the lichen fields, which look like bare gravel until water is poured on them, and the shipwreck between Wlotzkasbaken and Henties Bay.

Then inland through open plains to Uis and north to Twyfelfontein. Damaraland is khaki plain and sheer rock, home to desert-adapted elephant and black rhino, and the conservancy system that protects them here is one of the genuine conservation successes in Africa.

A full day in Damaraland. Twyfelfontein holds more than two thousand rock engravings, the finest prehistoric rock art in southern Africa and Namibia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Organ Pipes and Burnt Mountain are within a few kilometres.

Nature drives into the ephemeral Huab River valley go out after desert-adapted elephant, which are wide-ranging animals and never a guarantee, but this is one of the better places on earth to look for them. The Damara Living Museum is worth an hour. Lunches are at your own arrangement.

Damaraland to Etosha, 325 km, four to five hours. East toward Khorixas, stopping at the Petrified Forest where trees turned to stone two hundred and eighty million years ago, then along the tar to Outjo and north to the park's southern boundary.

Your lodge sits close to Andersson's Gate. The first stop inside the park is Okaukuejo, where you pay your entry fees and where the camp shop sells the single most useful thing you can carry in Etosha, which is a waterhole map. If the day has gone well there is time for an afternoon game drive before the gate closes at sunset.

A full day's game drive from the southern side of Etosha to the eastern boundary, taking it slowly and stopping at waterholes along the way. A packed lunch can be arranged at the lodge and eaten overlooking one of them.

Etosha holds 114 mammal species and 340 bird species around a 4,800 square kilometre salt pan. In the dry months the vegetation thins and about forty springs along the southern edge of the pan concentrate the wildlife in a way few parks anywhere can match. The eastern side is flat endless plain and tree savannah, a different landscape again. Two nights here.

A full day for game viewing, either driving all day or splitting into morning and afternoon with a rest between. These are self-drive game drives, though you can arrange to go out in an open vehicle with a guide from the lodge.

The eastern side of the park is where its density of wildlife is most obvious, and the waterholes here reward patience more than distance. Come back to camp in the middle of the day rather than pushing on.

Etosha East to Otjiwa, 330 km, four to five hours. South via Otavi and Otjiwarongo into the Waterberg region, where a two-hundred-metre sandstone plateau fifty kilometres long has become a refuge for species relocated away from predators and poaching.

Otjiwa is the oldest private game farm in Namibia and carries around 25 game species including white rhino, sable and roan. Sundowner drives, game walks, rhino tracking on foot and night drives are all arrangeable on arrival.

An early rise for the optional morning activity, then a full breakfast before departure. Otjiwa to Windhoek is 225 km on tarred roads, three to four hours.

Return the vehicle in Windhoek, where the rental is closed out, and transfer to Hosea Kutako International Airport. Allow generously: the airport is a forty-five minute to one hour drive from the city and check-in closes two hours before departure.