Namibia

Namibia is the great desert country of Africa — vast, empty, dramatically beautiful, and unlike anywhere else on the continent.

Its signature is landscape. The Namib, the oldest desert on earth, throws up the towering red dunes of Sossusvlei and the bleached pan of Deadvlei; the Skeleton Coast strings shipwrecks and seal colonies along a fog-bound Atlantic shore; and Damaraland and Kaokoland roll out some of the most ancient, rugged terrain anywhere. It is scenery on a scale that humbles.

But it is also genuine wildlife country. Etosha’s great salt pan draws elephant, lion, leopard, black rhino and vast herds to its waterholes; Damaraland holds desert-adapted elephants and lions that survive where almost nothing should; and Namibia protects the largest free-ranging black rhino population and the largest cheetah population on earth.

It is the easiest wilderness to travel independently. Good gravel roads, real safety and stability, and large malaria-free regions make Namibia a self-drive dream — though the distances are vast and fly-in opens the remoter corners. The empty roads are part of the magic.

The thing that makes a Namibia trip is the route. Get the self-drive or fly-in logistics right — the distances, the sequence, the desert and the wildlife in the correct order — and it is one of the great journeys. Get it wrong and it is days lost on gravel.