Author: Chard

The Hoba Meteorite near Grootfontein is the largest intact meteorite ever found on earth and the largest naturally occurring piece of iron known on the planet's surface, weighing around 60 tonnes. It fell roughly 80,000 years ago and has never…

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…

Katutura was created by forced removal and its name says so. It is frequently translated as the place where we do not want to live, which is what the people relocated there called it. Most of Windhoek's population lives in…

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 Kalahari occupies eastern and southeastern Namibia and it is not a true desert, which surprises most visitors. It receives too much rain to qualify, supports grass, camel thorn woodland and substantial wildlife, and is better described as a semi-arid…

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…

Ten days is the honest minimum for a first Namibian trip and fourteen is better. Seven works if you accept covering two places rather than four. The constraint is not distance on a map but the fact that gravel driving…

Hot air ballooning over the Namib lifts off before sunrise, drifts for about an hour over the dune sea in complete silence and finishes with a sparkling wine breakfast laid out in the desert. One operator has run it at…