Introducing Northwestern Namibia

For those who like to take a walk (or even a drive) on the wild side, northwestern Namibia is a stark, desolate environment where some of the most incredible landscapes imaginable lie astride 4WD tracks. Along the Skeleton Coast, seemingly endless expanses of foggy beach are punctuated by rusting shipwrecks and flanked by wandering dunes. Here, travellers are left entirely alone to bask in this riveting isolation, bothered only by the concern of whether their vehicles can survive the journey unscathed.

Not to be outdone by the barren coastline, the Kaokoveld is a photographer’s dream-scape of wide-open vistas, lonely desert roads and hardly another person around to ruin your shot. A vast repository of desert mountains, this is one of the least developed regions of the country, and arguably Namibia at its most primeval. The Kaokoveld is also the ancestral home of the Himba people, a culturally rich tribal group that has retained their striking appearance and dress.

And then there’s Damaraland, home to the Brandberg Massif, Namibia’s highest peak, and Twyfelfontein, which together contain some of Southern Africa’s finest prehistoric rock paintings and engravings. A veritable window into the past, these two sites help to illuminate the hidden inner workings of our collective forebears, who roamed the African savannah so many eons ago.