11-Day Namibia Highlights Private Guided Safari

Windhoek to Sossusvlei, 350 km, five to six hours. There is time after breakfast to pick up anything you need in town before your guide heads south over either the Spreetshoogte or the Remhoogte Pass, both of which drop off the escarpment with the whole of the Namib laid out below.

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.

An early breakfast and out to the Sesriem Gate for the full day in the dunes: Sossusvlei itself, Deadvlei with its nine-hundred-year-old camelthorn skeletons on cracked white clay, Dune 45, Big Daddy and Elim Dune. Sesriem Canyon, cut by the same river and only two metres wide in places, completes the day.

Return to the lodge for lunch through the heat of the middle of the day, or take a packed lunch out among the dunes, then back in the late afternoon. Lunch is at your own cost. A hot air balloon flight over the sand sea and nature drives on the reserve can both be arranged as extras.

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.

The route runs in via Walvis Bay, or on 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. Two nights here.

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

The options are wide: a dolphin and seal cruise, Sandwich Harbour by 4x4 where the dunes run straight into the Atlantic, sea kayaking, dune quad biking and sandboarding. These are extras booked locally. Lunch and dinner are at your own arrangement, at a cafe or restaurant over the sea.

Swakopmund to Damaraland, 445 km, seven to eight hours, and the longest day in the vehicle. 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, with stops at the lichen fields and the shipwreck between Wlotzkasbaken and Henties Bay.

Then back to Henties Bay and inland across 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. Lunch is at your own cost.

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 a few kilometres away, and the Damara Living Museum is worth an hour.

Your guide then takes the 4x4 west into the dry bed of the Huab River to look for desert-adapted elephant, along with oryx, springbok and ostrich. The elephant range widely and are never a guarantee, but this is one of the better places on earth to find them. Lunch is at your own cost.

Damaraland to Etosha, 325 km, four to five hours. East toward Khorixas with a stop at the Petrified Forest, where trees turned to stone two hundred and eighty million years ago lie where they fell, then along the tar to Outjo and north to the southern boundary of the park near Andersson's Gate.

You reach the lodge in time for lunch, at your own cost, then enter the park for an afternoon game drive. The first stop is Okaukuejo, where your guide settles the entry fees and picks up a waterhole map, the single most useful thing to carry in Etosha. The park holds 114 mammal species and 340 bird species, and 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. Lunch is at Halali, halfway between Okaukuejo and the eastern gate, or a picnic at a waterhole.

Etosha's 4,800 square kilometre salt pan concentrates the wildlife in the dry months, when the vegetation thins and the springs along the southern edge of the pan draw everything in. The eastern side is flat endless plain and tree savannah, reached through the Von Lindequist Gate, named for the governor who proclaimed the reserve in 1907. Two nights here.

A full day for game viewing, either out all day or split into morning and afternoon drives with your guide and a rest at camp between.

The eastern side of the park is quieter than the south, with Fischer's Pan and the Namutoni waterholes within easy reach of the gate. Evenings at camp end at the fire, which is where the day's sightings get compared.

Etosha East to Windhoek, 490 km, around six hours, south on good tar the whole way.

Your guide drops you at Hosea Kutako International Airport in time for your flight. The airport is forty-five minutes to an hour beyond the city and check-in closes two hours before departure, so flights from mid afternoon onward work best.