Visit the Sossusvlei sand dunes in Namibia

“The wind has picked up, just as I begin to climb Dune 45, here at Sossusvlei. The uphill hike was already going to be relatively tough but this is making it even harder. It’s all this damn sand! Each step you make up a sand dune has its own small struggle, as your foot sinks down into the sand and you have to pull it back out to tread forward. I’m going barefoot to make it a bit easier, but I still find my leg muscles working overtime. But now, with this wind, the sand is being picked up from the dune and blasted straight into me. It’s not too bad on my face, expect when there’s a particularly strong gust, but I feel it constantly on my legs below my shorts. It stings slightly as thousands of tiny bits of sand hit me at high velocity. You know what, though? I’m loving it!”

“It’s taken me years to get here, but I am finally about to see the sun rise over the highest dunes on the planet. The reality of the moment doesn’t fully sink in until we, my four fellow adventure travelers and I, are bumping along a sand trail that only our guide, Jimmy Limbo, can detect across the shadow landscape of the private Kulala Wilderness Reserve. The sky begins to glow with pre-dawn light and shortly thereafter we reach the private Wilderness Safaris entrance into the park. It’s precisely sunrise, the official opening time of the Namib-Naukluft National Park. Although “our” gate follows the same schedule as the public Sesriem Gate, it has the huge advantage to be a good 25 kilometers closer to the dune field and not subject to any entrance formality delays. For almost one hour, we have the rare privilege to experience the intense silence and awesome grandeur of the oldest desert in the world in exquisite solitude.”

“I am too busy dragging myself up a much less impressive incline to get to the Deadvlei (Afrikaan for Dead Lake) pan to take notice. Once a small basin moist enough to allow camel thorn trees to grow, Deadvlei dried up some 900 years ago due to climate change and encroaching dunes. Today, in the relentless mid-morning sun, the vision of skeletal remains of dead trees rising from the cracked white clay floor against a backdrop of orange dunes looks like a colossal surrealist fresco.”