The overarching feeling I will carry with me of Namibia is a place of great stillness, space and solitude – which can be incredible and not a little unsettling for a girl who grew up in the chaotic cacophony of India.

Namibia is one of most sparsely populated countries in the world (it has the second lowest population density after Mongolia) and is also one of the driest, with most of the country covered by the Namib and Kalahari deserts. But there is a surprising diversity of landscape and biodiversity to be found – cracked bone-white salt pans framed by towering fiery red dunes; undulating golden grasslands; ochre-and-olive hued plains marked by dried curving riverbeds, dust-laden thorny shrubs, and tiny periwinkle blue and yellow flowers that bloom obstinately in the desert against all odds; the rugged and geologically dramatic Damaraland; the iconic dunes-by-the-sea of Sandwich Harbour; and the eerie skeletal trees of Deadvlei.

The roads in Namibia roll up and down like mini rollercoasters in places with blind crests, shimmering heat mirages and dust clouds forming a fog-like haze in the distance – but in general I found it much safer and easier to drive here (as compared to, for example, central London or the narrow country lanes of Ireland). Its funny to see road signs warning you of warthogs and elephants crossing the road and while we did see the occasional ostrich or baboon family fornicating (yes) by the roadside, most of our animal sightings were in the Etosha National Park.

Namibia was colonised by Germany in the late 19th century, a brief but bloody occupation marked by the genocide of the Herero and Nama people in 1904-08 (perhaps a foreshadowing of the Holocaust). The country was then handed over to the apartheid South African state after Germany’s defeat in World War I. Interestingly, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union and Cuba militarily and financially backed the liberation movement which finally culminated in freedom from South African occupation as late as 1990. The transition to democracy was relatively peaceful and interestingly, Namibia became one of the few nations in the world to specifically address conservation of natural resources in its new Constitution.

While Namibia is significantly wealthier compared to many of its Sub Saharan neighbours, inequality is stark. While driving through small roadside hamlets, children would run towards our car asking for food and water. I found it a little odd that all the places we stayed in had mostly White and some East Asian tourists. A similar dynamic played out in the beachfront restaurants and bougie cafes of the pastel-hued coastal town of Swakopmund. One of our guides mentioned that only White Namibians (mainly Afrikaners of White South African descent, who make up about 2% of population) can afford to live in central Windhoek. Another guide remarked that the majority of Namibians do not get the opportunity to appreciate the natural beauty of their own homeland given the prohibitively expensive entrance fees to the national parks. And so a kind of economic apartheid seems to persist, nearly 40 years after it was legally ended.

Namibia Travel Diary Part 1: Etosha National Park

While most itineraries travel south from Windhoek then west then north we went the other way, kicking off on a high with two full days of safari in Etosha. The first day we went on a guided game drive and our young driver proved to be lucky with a triumphant sighting of lions almost as soon as we entered the park. The way veritable mobs of white 4x4s congregate and jostle with each other on the road while the lion or lioness in question walk past, imperiously indifferent to the fawning humans, is never not funny. We also saw a black rhino and had multiple sightings of cheetahs. Once, a couple of cheetahs streaked past us on the road ahead. Later in the afternoon we saw a female cheetah hauling a dead deer to a shady spot under a tree and calling for her cubs to join her for lunch.

The second day we embarked on a self-drive safari. In order to not get lost (the park spans an area of roughly 22,270 km²), we did the safari equivalent of a pub crawl, driving from waterhole to waterhole and then parking and patiently watching groups of animals cautiously making their way for a drink – oryx, springbok, black-faced Imphalas, zebras, giraffes, ostriches, wildebeest (or as I call them, the grumpy old men of the African wild). The most delightful are elephants who amble over and proceed to have a mud bath, spraying water all over themselves and each other to cool down in the midday heat. After seeing a couple of young male springboks head butting each other, our guide told us that in many species its common for a dominant male to assert himself and then kick out the other males who have to go off and form bachelor herds. Toxic masculinity is a trait spanning species apparently. Okaukuejo is the administrative centre in Etosha where you have to go to pay the park entrance fees, and one edge of it overlooks a big waterhole with benches helpfully placed all around the perimeter so you can sit and munch on your picnic sandwiches while watching the animals come and go.

We drove to a viewpoint called Okondeka for what we hoped would be shimmering views of the Etosha Pan but unfortunately in the dry season there is no water and only a vast cracked expanse of dried mud and salt with dark silhouettes of wildebeest and oryx floating in the hazy distance like wraiths haunting a ghostly white sea.

Namibia Travel Diary Part 2: Damaraland and Twyfelfontain

For me one of the highlights of the trip was staying at the Vingerklip Lodge in Damaraland. The resort is spectacularly situated in a landscape that looks like the American southwest (think Monument valley in Arizona). A vast expanse of rust-and-ochre plains is punctuated with dramatic granite and basalt outcroppings, tabled plateaus and limestone pillars including the famous Vingerklip (“finger rock”). There is a gentle hiking trail that starts in the resort and circles one such large ridge. And for dinner you can climb up to a restaurant aptly named “Eagle’s Nest” perched right on the cliff edge for sundowner drinks and marvel at the soft coral, lavender and golden hues of the sunset suffusing this ancient sculptural amphitheatre. When climbing down the cliffside at night, it is unsettling to look out into the eerie black abyss stretching out in all directions, and realise there is no other human settlement for miles around.

Twyfelfontain translates to “doubtful fountain” in Afrikaans, named after a farmer called David Levins who settled in the area in 1948 and habitually fretted to his neighbours about the uncertain nature of a local freshwater spring. However the site is actually famous for more than 2,000 petroglyphs or rock carvings found in the area, said to be made by the San hunter-gatherers between 2,000-6,000 years ago. The engravings depict different animals recognisable as giraffes, zebras, rhinos, oryx, elephants, wildebeest and seals. The absence of human figures is curious but researchers believe the human characteristics given to some animal figures, like a lion with five toes on each paw, represent shamans transforming into animals during supernatural rituals or “trance dances”.

Namibia Travel Diary Part 3: Swakopmund and Sandwich Harbour

From Damaraland we made our way southwest to the Skeleton Coast, stopping along the way at the Cape Cross nature reserve, a protected site where over 200,000 fur seals flop around on the beach raising an infernal din with their incessant yelps, wails, bleats, barks, and growls. The place has a strong fishy stench which clings to you for a couple of hours afterwards but it is well worth the stop to see their antics. Some seals are napping peacefully while others are waddling furiously around, sometimes clambering over other sleeping seals while producing this bizarre cacophony of sounds – apparently some of the sounds are meant to help the mom seals find their young pups when they return from foraging trips into the ocean. The more aggressive barks and growls are typically the male bulls marking their territory and trying to scare off strangers.

We stayed for a couple of nights in Swakopmund, known for its colonial architecture, palm-fringed avenues and beachside promenade. I followed this short walking itinerary through the town centre which covered off the most interesting looking buildings.

There are many activities available in Swakopmund – a popular one amongst families seems to be quad biking through the neighbouring dunes, but I chose an excursion to Sandwich Harbour to marvel at the famous “Dunes-by-the Sea”. This included thrilling rollercoaster drives up and down the dunes in a sturdy 4×4 expertly driven by a scruffy barefoot man called Alfie who spoke Afrikaans, wore a pink wooly hat and smoked like a chimney!

A cool trick he showed us was switching on our phone camera right on top of the sands on the beach to see the disaggregated many-hued crystal, metal and mineral particles. On the way to Sandwich Harbour, we also stopped to see the pink-hued salt pans and flamingoes in Walvis Bay. The huge saltworks factory operating here pumps seawater into artificial ponds for evaporation. An algae which produces a pigment called beta-carotene gives the water and the flamingoes in the area their pinkish hue. You can also see the drying salt heaped up in white mounds nearby.

Namibia Travel Diary Part 4: Sossusvlei and Deadvlei

From Swakopmund we drove into the Namib desert to visit the Namib-Naukluft National Park. The lodge where we stayed had an extraordinary variety of desert vegetation in the surrounding plains including flowering shrubs and succulents and camel thorn trees which produce ear-shaped pods filled with seeds which apparently make a pretty good substitute for coffee.


The Namib desert is famous for its towering ranges of shimmering, shape-shifting tangerine-red sand dunes which can rise up to 300-400 metres. Sossusvlei (“dead-end marsh”) and Deadvlei are dry, bone-white, cracked clay pans amidst this dunescape – the latter is more famous as it is scattered with blackened skeletons of camel thorn trees thought to be 900 years old, preserved because the climate is too dry for them to decay. The stark contrast of the white pan floor ringed by the apricot-hued dunes, and the gnarly branches of the trees reaching up towards the cobalt blue skies make for an amazing photo opportunity.

On the drive back, we made a brief stop at Sesreim Canyon, a narrow rocky gorge shaped by the Tsauchab River over millions of years although now there is only the odd shallow puddle of water left. It was named Sesreim as the early Afrikaans explorers used six (“ses”) leather straps (“riem”) tied together to create a rope long enough to lower buckets into the canyon below to fetch water.