My desert fix

There’s a question travellers are asked – ‘What are you? Mountain, ocean, forest or desert?’

For me it has always been desert. Which is ironic as I’m not great with extreme heat. But there’s something about a desert that is mesmerising, inspiring and humbling. The colours, the wildness and the tenacity of life in the harsh environment of the Namib Desert make it one of my favourites.

Following unusually long rains, the desert is currently green. The grass seeds that have lain dormant for fifteen years are now bursting to life. The plants that struggle to make this place home are thriving. The driest desert in the world is coming to life.

Around Twyfelfontein, craggy red mountains resemble the American West. Hidden amongst the rocks are petroglyphs from 6000 years ago. The usual depictions of the wildlife the bushmen encountered – zebra, elephant, lion and more unusually for the desert, penguin. Less common are the footprints of all these animals, a pre-historic tracking lesson for would-be hunters.

I have seen many different desert scenes across the world but this is the image I will now picture when I answer that question. Vibrant greens against red, red rock against a deep blue sky. The vivid colours of the desert.

The Namib Desert stretches for 2000km up the Atlantic coast, a narrow ribbon of sand before the plains of the African interior. Probably the most remote section is the Skeleton Coast. Here the sun disappears, to be replaced by thick fog driven onshore by the Bengeula current. Thousands of ships have run aground here over the centuries, their hulls now maritime skeletons up and down the coast. Remote beaches give a sense of the wild side of the desert, waves crashing upon the sand, the mist lurking as the sun tries to break through.

Standing in the middle of the desert with sand stretching to each horizon, you get a real sense of scale and perspective. Of the insignificance of a human life. The sound of silence…until a car drives by in the other direction!

That feeling of space can be more accurately measured by looking at a map. Henties Bay is the last town in Namibia, 700 km from the border with Angola and several more before the next town. As you drive across the desert road signs count down the kilometres to the next ‘town’. Solitaire is one example – a petrol station, bakery, tourist information and 3 houses. Such a place wouldn’t even be marked on a map at home. Here it is considered a metropolis.

Sossusvlei is the most famous desert feature in Namibia. An area of perfect sand dunes. These aren’t your seaside dunes of Camber Sands or Braunton Burrows. These are massive mountains of sand. Big Daddy is over 300m tall. Dune 45 (imaginatively named after its distance from the National Park gate) is about half that size. Not that that makes climbing it easy. It is a long slog to the top as each step sinks into the sand. But it’s great fun coming back down again! As much as we think of the shifting sands of the desert, in fact these dunes don’t move, the iron particles in them weighing down the sand.

For a (temporary) nomad, being somewhere so beautiful makes you think about where to settle down. Could I live in the rocky surrounds of Twyfelfontein? It has been done. The desert can provide food, lodging and even water. To wake up to that view each morning would be inspiring. I like to think I would feel at peace. But would a life with no neighbours, no ‘proper job’, no intellectual stimulus actually be quite boring? Perhaps it’s just an idyllic dream….