So near, yet so far flung Discover Namibia, so near, yet so far flung

Welcome to Namibia, so near, yet so far flung. To experience a truly out-of-this-world landscape you could be Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, and build your own interplanetary spaceliner. But of course you’re sane. And perfectly happy on Earth – knowing that virtually next door you couldn’t get further away from life’s everyday urban angles than Namibia’s Damaraland.

Flying in over an oceanic panorama of rolling Damaraland dunes, craggy inselbergs and the scars of dry riverbeds, you’re struck by the Namib Desert’s sepia spectrum. But also the light. And the endlessness of no people.

Namibia is one of the least populous countries per square kilometre on the planet. The Damara, Nama and Hai/Om, ultimately related to the San Bushmen, have scratched out a living from the ostensibly bare sand here for millennia. More recently – relatively – nine other ethnic groups have joined Namibia’s local inhabitants. Probably the Herero, famous for their quaint Victorian traditional dress, and the Himba – cast out by their own cousins the Herero, and a nation time seems to have forgotten – are the most well-known. Others include Caprivian, Kavango, Baster and Riemvasmaker. Names as evocative as their spiritual homelands. All have stories to tell.

Those who dare eke their existence from the Namib in north-western Namibia know all about the wildlife. What lion is going to pass up a goat-shaped appetiser, when oryx and springbok are so thin on the ground? Conservationists are employed full time to keep the stock in a live state, while also protecting the predators from the pastoralists’ reprisal. Was there ever a more aptly named vicious cycle?

The desert-adapted lion population of Namibia is tiny, maybe 120 – if that – and they are gravely imperilled due to human-wildlife conflict across their range. As with all big cats, they are opportunistic hunters, and as their territories dictate, have been known to kill seals and seabirds at ephemeral river oases and on the beaches. But also livestock, given a fraction of a chance. It’s a daily struggle. They range in this narrow coastal belt, so you stand a pretty good chance of spotting a small pride. Or nomadic male. Likely collared, for their own protection.

Watching a bull elephant reaching into a treetop to feed, a breeding herd quietly browsing along the treeline of a dry riverbed, or a tired teenage pachy making an ‘elephant angel’ as it snoozes in the soft sand, are big game encounters like literally nothing you’ve seen before. Typically thinner than their bush cousins, desert elephants also appear to have bigger feet to cope with their loose, sandy terrain. They walk softly, and carry big sticks when they can.

Giraffes in the desert are a bit like everyone’s ‘gifted’ cousin at the family wedding. Good looking in a supernerdily awkward way, weirdly taller than everyone else, and inevitably struggling with their social skills at the bar, you will end up with a huge crush on them. Because who wouldn’t love ‘a quiet poem masked by a tree’, as a New York Times journalist described these long-legged Smartie-boxes?

It’s interesting to compare the Hartmann’s mountain zebra to its plains relatives. The former’s distinct black stripes (no shadow stripe) stop abruptly on its belly, but continue down its legs. Very pretty. Your guide will tell you the white stomach is believed to be a cooling device. Also, they’re encouragingly chubby, in this hardscrabble land.

Apart from being the eponyms for a South African Airforce utility helicopter, and a world-beating rugby team, oryx and springboks are the menu items of choice for apex predators here, including venison-admiring camp chefs. Stately and rather beautiful they are both. With luck you’ll spot a springbok pronking, or stotting, as it trampolines up to two metres in the air to impress a mate or evade a hungry cheetah.

From an aerial perspective it seems inconceivable that any living animal, vegetable or, indeed, mineral could survive here. Until you experience the Skeleton Coast’s notorious coastal fog. Formed when the icy cold Benguela current meets the desert’s moist, warm air at the shore break, it condenses into a soft cloak of cold moisture, each molecule eagerly taken up by thirsty nara and welwitschia plants (that occur nowhere else in the world). Tenebrionid beetles survive by collecting dew from trenches they dig to trap the moisture, or by turning into ‘fog rods’, standing on their heads to capture droplets which trickle down their bodies into their mouths. In turn, geckos, snakes and birds, among others, take their sustenance from the beetles.

Here’s to life on mars.