Grand Tour of Namibia

Fly overnight from London Heathrow to Windhoek.

On arrival transfer to the 5-star Hilton for an overnight stay. An introductory drive through Windhoek shows you its highlights, where colonial churches and a couple of castles are juxtaposed with contemporary towers and palm fringed parks, and the gingerbread Lutheran Christus Church is a notable landmark. Township tour with local food tasting. This evening, enjoy a special dinner at the Hotel Heinitzburg, a castle, built in 1914, overlooking the capital.
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Travel south toward the Kalahari (5hrs), stopping enroute at Rehoboth, founded in the mid-1800s as a mission station, and set on a rugged plateau just north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Trees, scrub, grasses, and fossil watercourses are not typical of the Kalahari Desert, but regular rainfall in its Namibian area makes it an ideal habitat for wildlife, from gemsbok and springbok to mongoose and meerkat. Explore it on a Nature drive. Overnight at the 3-star Bagatelle Kalahari Game Ranch.
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Continue (6 hrs) toward the southernmost point of the tour, visiting the unworldly landscape of Quiver Tree Forest, a rare cluster of weird-looking aloe trees rising, up to 30ft tall, from a rocky hillside. Two nights at the Gondwana Collection Lodge, within Gondwana Canyon Park, approx. 20km from Fish River Canyon. Afternoon at leisure or discover the area with an optional sundowner drive (bookable locally).
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With walls up to 650m high, the Fish River gorge cuts through the Koubis massif from Seeheim to the hot springs of Ai-Ais, its river a torrent in the rainy season and barely a stream in the dry. Visit the viewpoint for fantastic perspectives on the canyon. Afternoon at leisure or enjoy an optional nature drive (bookable locally).
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Travel (8hrs) to Sossusvlei, in the southern Namib Desert. Part of the Namib-Naukluft National Park, its landscape is a huge, gleaming ‘vlei’, a clay and salt pan, encircled by enormous wind-sculpted ‘star dunes’, and forming a fantastically photogenic arena. Two nights at the 4-star Desert Quiver Camp, just 5km from Sossusvlei gate.
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Drive to Namib National Park and switch to a 4x4 vehicle to view ‘Dune 45’, perhaps the most photographed dune on Earth, the colour of its 85m-high sands mutating with the day’s changing light; and continue to Dead Vlei, where long dead, pitch-black camel thorn trees rise starkly from the bleached-white floor of the pan, with a backdrop of rust-red dunes, beneath a dome of bright blue sky. Visit Sesriem Canyon, a deep cleft at the edge of the desert, its soaring rock walls indented with caves. Later, enjoy a desert ‘braai’ (barbecue).
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Travel (6hrs) through lunar landscapes along the Gaub Pass, twisting around the rock formations of Kuiseb Canyon, en route to coastal Swakopmund, with palm-lined streets, half-timbered houses, and an iconic lighthouse. Two nights at the landmark Swakopmund Hotel, converted from the town’s colonial railway station.
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A day at leisure to stroll ‘the Mole’ seawall and elegant avenues; or set your sights on sea and sky with two optional tours, a morning cruise at Walvis Bay (£75, pre-booking essential), and a flight over Skeleton Coast (bookable locally), originally named for the bones strewn on the beach from the whaling industry, but now referring to shipwrecks off its Atlantic shore.
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Travel (7hrs) to the Damaraland’s Twyfelfontein valley, where we visit Namibia’s first UNESCO World Heritage site, a veritable gallery of ancient rock art, the largest collection of petroglyphs in Africa. Just 10km from here, visit the Living Museum of Damara, to experience the traditional way of life of the Damara people, originally hunter-gatherers and herders of cattle and goats. This unique project aims to revive their ‘lost culture’. Two nights at the 3-star Twyfelfontein Lodge, located in the Huab valley.
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An open-vehicle game drive this morning takes you into the wilderness area and varied terrain of Damaraland, boasting plains game and prolific birdlife, in search of the rare black rhinos and desert elephants. Afternoon at leisure to enjoy the lodge’s pool, or join an optional game drive (bookable locally).
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With game viewing enroute, the journey (8hrs) to Etosha is punctuated by a visit to the Petrified Forest, not an upright ‘forest’ but a collection of perfectly preserved and petrified tree trunks, thought to be 280 million years old, and to have been carried downriver to this spot in the thaw of one of the Ice Ages. Overnight within Etosha National Park at the government managed Okaukuejo camp, overlooking a floodlit waterhole, and providing a rare opportunity to observe, at close quarters, the spectacle of congregating wildlife. Enjoy a ‘braai’ dinner.
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Namibia is known as the ‘cheetah capital of the world’ and Etosha gives you the greatest chance of seeing them. Flocks of flamingos visit the massive Etosha Pan salt flat/lagoon, and mighty rhinos share the plains with elephants, lions, leopards, loping giraffes, and huge herds of antelopes. Cross the reserve to its north-eastern gateway for two nights at the Etosha King Nehale Lodge. Explore the park with an open-vehicle game drive.
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A full-day of wildlife-viewing with an open-vehicle game drive in abundant Etosha, home to well over a hundred mammal species and three times as many bird types.
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Journey south to Okonjima (6hrs), the enclosed nature reserve home to the AfriCat Foundation, dedicated to ‘conservation through education’ of a variety of rare and endangered species, from leopard and brown hyena to aardvark and pangolin. Continue to Otjiwarongo, an idyllic retreat at a protected reserve in central Namibia. Two nights at Otjiwa Safari Lodge.
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Morning Rhino trekking. Afternoon at leisure.
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Transfer to Windhoek Airport for the return overnight flight to London.
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Arrival at London Heathrow.