Author: Chard

The single most expensive mistake in Namibian travel is the insurance clause nobody reads. Basic rental cover frequently excludes single vehicle accidents, meaning rolling on gravel or swerving to avoid a kudu, which is exactly how Namibian accidents happen. Standard…

The Caprivi Strip, now officially the Zambezi Region, is a narrow finger of land running east from Namibia's northern border between Angola, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Four perennial rivers make it the only genuinely green part of the country, holding…

Cape Cross holds the largest breeding colony of Cape fur seals in the world, with numbers reaching well over 100,000 animals at the November and December peak. It sits 120 kilometres north of Swakopmund inside Dorob National Park, reached on…

Namibia is one of the best camping countries in the world and the reason is space: 2.6 million people across an area larger than France and Germany combined, with a network of well run campsites reaching almost everywhere. Rooftop tents…

Deadvlei is a white clay pan in the Namib Desert holding the blackened skeletons of camel thorn trees that died centuries ago and never decayed, ringed by orange dunes rising more than 300 metres. Visitors reach it on foot, about…

Katima Mulilo sits on the Zambezi River at the far eastern tip of Namibia, well over 1,200 kilometres from Windhoek, closer to Lusaka and Harare than to its own capital. It is the regional capital of the Zambezi Region and…

Kaokoland is the remotest part of Namibia reachable by road, a mountainous stretch of the Kunene Region running north to the Angolan border where the Himba still live largely as they have for centuries. Opuwo is the only real supply…

Kamanjab is the crossroads of northwestern Namibia, the point where routes to Etosha's western gate, Damaraland, the Kunene and the coast separate. It is a small farming settlement with fuel, a shop and guest farms, and its value is entirely…

The honey badger, known across southern Africa as the ratel, occurs throughout Namibia and is seen by very few visitors. It stands around 30 centimetres at the shoulder, weighs 9 to 16 kilograms, and is among the most powerful African…

Two jackal species occur in Namibia, and one of them you will see constantly while the other you almost certainly will not. Black backed jackal are common countrywide, from the Skeleton Coast where they hunt seal pups to the farmland…