11-Day Namibia Highlights Self-Drive Safari

Windhoek to Sossusvlei, 350 km, five to six hours. South out of the capital over either the Spreetshoogte or the Remhoogte Pass, both of which drop off the escarpment in a way that makes the first stop of the trip an obvious one.

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.

The full day in the dunes. Leave before dawn for the Sesriem Gate and work through the highlights in the first light: 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, is the afternoon. Come back through the middle of the day when the light goes flat and the heat is at its worst, then go out again late. Optional extras include a guided Sossusvlei excursion, nature drives and a hot air balloon flight over the sand sea.

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 at Pelican Point, 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, and the longest driving day of the trip. 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, and the Petrified Forest, with trees turned to stone two hundred and eighty million years ago, is on the road east.

The Damara Living Museum is worth an hour. 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.

Damaraland to Etosha, 325 km, four to five hours. East toward Khorixas, stopping at the Petrified Forest, then along the tar to Outjo and north to the southern boundary of the park.

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 Onguma Reserve on the park's eastern boundary covers 34,000 hectares and holds four of the Big Five along with more than three hundred bird species. Its Onkolo hide sits at water level, which is the best photographic position on this side of the park and worth coming back to camp for in the middle of the day.

Etosha East to Windhoek, 490 km, around six hours, and the longest single drive of the trip. It runs south on good tar the whole way.

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.