Namibian Photographic Journey Self-Drive Safari

Windhoek to Sossusvlei, 350 km, five to six hours. The road runs south out of the capital and crosses 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. Your lodge is inside the park gate, which matters more than it sounds.

The full day in the dunes, and the reason to be camped inside the gate. Leave before dawn for Sossusvlei and work through the highlights in the first light: 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 through the middle of the day when the light is flat and the heat is worst, then go back into the park in the late afternoon for the second pass. Photographers get two entirely different sets of images out of the same dunes, which is the point of staying two nights. Optional extras include a guided Sossusvlei excursion, nature drives and a hot air balloon flight.

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 recommended routing detours via Ganab to the Welwitschia Plains, where individual plants of Welwitschia mirabilis 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 that has more good restaurants than anywhere else in the country.

Swakopmund to the Erongo Mountains, 400 km, five to six 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 across open plains to Spitzkoppe, the granite inselberg that rises seventeen hundred metres out of flat desert and is the most photographed rock formation in Namibia. The rock arch at sunset is the shot everybody comes for. San paintings are scattered through the area. Your lodge for the night sits in the Erongo foothills half an hour further on.

Ai-Aiba to Etosha, 325 km, four to five hours. Head east via Usakos and Karibib, then north through Omaruru and Outjo to Andersson's Gate on the park's southern boundary.

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 you will have time for an afternoon game drive before settling in. Two nights here.

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 around forty springs and waterholes along the southern edge of the pan concentrate the wildlife in a way few parks anywhere can match.

Spend the day driving between waterholes, or split it into a morning and an afternoon with a rest in between. The roads are good and the waterholes are clearly marked, which makes this one of the best self-drive parks in Africa. Okaukuejo's floodlit waterhole runs all night and is where black rhino are most reliably seen. Sitting there after dark with a flask is one of the best things this trip offers and it costs nothing.

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. Take a packed lunch and eat it overlooking one of them.

The eastern side is flat endless plain and tree savannah, a different landscape from the south, and the density of wildlife there is what Etosha is known for. You exit toward Onguma, a 34,000-hectare private reserve on the park's eastern edge with four of the Big Five and a photographic hide of its own.

Onguma to Otjiwa, 320 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: white rhino, buffalo, sable and roan antelope, alongside resident giraffe, kudu, leopard and cheetah.

This is also the country of the AfriCat Foundation, which has worked on large carnivore conservation in Namibia since the early 1990s and has moved over that time from rescue and rehabilitation toward the harder work of reducing conflict between farmers and predators. Your lodge is the oldest private game farm in the country, with rhino tracking on foot, night drives and a visit to the nearby Ombu Village all arrangeable.

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.