The Namibian Traverse Private Guided Safari

Windhoek to the Kalahari, 245 km, three to four hours. After breakfast there is time to pick up anything you need in town before your guide heads south 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 hiking trails go out from the lodge, and the sunset from a dune crest is the reason to spend a night here rather than pushing straight south. All meals are included tonight.

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

On the way there is a detour to the Quiver Tree Forest and Giant's Playground, where dolerite boulders sit stacked as though somebody arranged them and the tree aloes that give the forest its name grow between the rocks. The Fish River Canyon is the largest in Africa, 160 km long and up to 550 metres deep, and the view at sunset ends the day.

Fish River Canyon to Luderitz, 385 km, five to six hours. A morning look at the canyon, then 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 is a German colonial town wedged between the desert and a cold Atlantic, and the wind rarely stops.

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

The peninsula has its own coastline of lagoons and headlands, and a boat trip out to Halifax Island and its African penguins can be arranged as an extra. Lunch and dinner are at the restaurants in town.

Luderitz to Sossusvlei, 505 km, seven to eight hours, and the longest distance of the trip. Back to Aus and 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.

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. 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.

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. North 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 inland across open plains through Uis to Twyfelfontein.

Twyfelfontein holds more than two thousand rock engravings, the finest prehistoric rock art in southern Africa and Namibia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the Organ Pipes and Burnt Mountain close by. The Damara Living Museum is worth an hour if the day allows. Lunch is at your own cost.

Damaraland to Opuwo, 340 km, five to six hours. North via Palmwag, across the Hoanib River and over Joubert Pass into Kaokoland, the most isolated corner of a country that is mostly isolated. This is desert-adapted elephant and black rhino country. Lunch is at your own cost.

Opuwo is the regional centre, where Himba, Herero, Damara and Owambo people live side by side. If there is time this afternoon, the hotel arranges a visit to a Himba homestead with a local guide who knows the family. We do not stop at roadside villages, and nobody is photographed without being asked.

Opuwo to Epupa Falls, 180 km, around three hours, and the shortest drive of the trip. The road runs north to the Angolan border, where the Kunene River drops through a broad series of falls up to thirty-seven metres high, framed by baobabs clinging to the rock.

This is one of the wildest and least visited corners of Namibia. Two nights here, with a full day tomorrow.

A full day on the Kunene. Mornings are when Himba homesteads are most active, and a visit arranged through the camp with a guide who knows the family is the right way to go. We do not stop at roadside villages, and nobody is photographed without being asked. Buy jewellery directly from the women who make it.

The rest of the day holds a walk along the river, birding in the riverine strip, seasonal rafting and a sundowner on the hill above the falls. Lunch is at your own cost.

Epupa Falls to western Etosha, 375 km, around five hours. Back to Opuwo, then east and south toward the Galton Gate and the wilder, far less visited western third of Etosha, where the soil runs reddish-brown and the country undulates, a marked contrast to the white clay pans of the east.

Tonight is at Dolomite Camp, the first camp built inside western Etosha, on a ridge above ten waterholes in country that holds black rhino, black-faced impala and Hartmann's mountain zebra. You arrive in the afternoon with time for a game drive.

After breakfast, a full morning's game drive east through the park to Okaukuejo, where your guide settles the entry fees and picks up a waterhole map, the single most useful thing to carry in Etosha. Then out through Andersson's Gate to Ongava.

Etosha holds 114 mammal species and 340 bird species. Ongava is a 30,000-hectare private reserve on the park's southern boundary with resident white and black rhino, so the reserve itself is worth the afternoon.

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, with a picnic lunch at one of them.

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 fully inclusive nights at Onguma The Fort, looking west over Fischer's Pan.

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 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 and is worth coming back to camp for in the middle of the day, and the evening sunset drive on the reserve looks west over Fischer's Pan.

Etosha East to Okonjima, 315 km, four to five hours. South via Otavi and Otjiwarongo to the Okonjima Nature Reserve, home of the AfriCat Foundation.

You arrive by two in the afternoon, in time for tea before the afternoon excursion. AfriCat 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. After dinner there is an optional visit to the night hide for nocturnal animals.

An early rise and a quick snack before the morning activity, either a visit to the AfriCat Foundation or a drive in the reserve, then back to camp for a full breakfast. Okonjima to Windhoek is 225 km on tar, three to four hours.

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.