Sossusvlei

Sossusvlei is the place where the Namib — the oldest desert on Earth, fifty-five million years of it — shows what sand can do: dunes of iron-red, three hundred metres high, marching in from the Atlantic to the pan where the Tsauchab river gives up, sixty kilometres inside the park from the gate at Sesriem, in a sand sea that UNESCO listed in 2013. The names are the itinerary: Dune 45, at the forty-fifth kilometre of the road, whose crest is climbed before dawn; Sossusvlei itself, the white clay pan that fills with water perhaps once a decade; Deadvlei beside it, where camelthorn trees dead for nine hundred years stand black on white clay under the red of Big Daddy, the tallest dune, three hundred and twenty-five metres, which is climbed for the view and run down for the joy; and the Sesriem canyon, a kilometre of rock the river cut thirty metres deep. Oryx and ostrich walk the plains between; balloons rise at first light; the fog comes in from the coast on some mornings; Solitaire, with its apple pie, is up the road, and the NamibRand reserve, one of the darkest skies on Earth, is south.

The traveller drives down from Windhoek in five hours, or up from the coast, and sleeps as close to the gate as the budget allows — inside it, at the park's camp or lodge, if possible, because the gate opens with the sun and the inside guests reach the dunes an hour ahead of everyone: the drive in the blue light, the climb of Dune 45 as the sun comes over the ridge and the dunes turn from grey to red in a minute, the walk across the sand from the 4×4 stop to Deadvlei, the black trees and the silence; the heat of the day at the pool; the canyon in the late afternoon and a dune near Sesriem for the sunset; and, on the second morning, the balloon, or Big Daddy for the strong of leg, and the long slow drive out with the oryx on the gravel plains.

The Guide's honesty: the dunes are a long way from everything — the roads are gravel and slow, the tyre is the traveller's responsibility, and the fuel is planned —; the park's beds inside the gate are few and booked far ahead, and the lodges outside are priced for a monument; the sun is merciless from nine o'clock, and the climb of Big Daddy is done early and with water; the last five kilometres of sand are for a 4×4 or the shuttle, not the hire car, whatever the confidence; and the first minute of light on the crest of Dune 45, with the whole sand sea turning colour, is one of the sights the Guide would cross the world for, which is why this page is written the way it is.