namibia: the namib dunes to damaraland

It is real tracking, so it can succeed or fail.

The black rhino here are free-roaming animals on unfenced community land, part of the last truly wild rhino population, in a country that holds about a third of the world's black rhino.

You go out with the conservancy's rhino rangers, who find tracks and follow them, and the last stretch is on foot, slowly and quietly: a black rhino struggles to make out a person beyond about 30 metres, but its hearing and sense of smell are excellent.

The animals range widely, so a day can end with tracks and no rhino, and no success figures have been published for this lodge that we can find. The lodge offers rhino tracking only on a stay of three nights, which is why this route has three.

Desert-adapted elephants are searched for separately, by vehicle along the dry riverbeds, and are easiest to find from about June to October.

Three nights gives you three dawns, which is the luxury of this route.

Dawn matters because a dune only shows its shape when the sun is low and strikes it from the side: one flank glows, the other falls into shadow, and the crest between them becomes a sharp line. With the sun high, both sides are lit alike and the red goes pale.

Visitors using the public gate at Sesriem cannot enter until sunrise and then face a 60-kilometre drive, while Little Kulala's guides go in through the reserve's own gate, which is how you are in place for first light.

A sensible plan:

• One morning for Deadvlei, where the dead trees throw hard shadows across the pale clay
• One for Big Daddy, about 325 metres and up to two hours of soft sand
• One in hand for Sesriem Canyon or, if you ask us to add it, a dawn balloon flight

Not if you use them.

After the heat and the early starts of the desert, the coast is cool, often foggy until midday, and a good place to slow down, but there is more to do than the town suggests. The sample route leaves these days open, so ask us to book what appeals.

The classic outing is a 4x4 trip from Walvis Bay to Sandwich Harbour, where tall dunes drop straight into the Atlantic beside a lagoon. Whether the vehicles reach the lagoon itself depends on the tide and the weather, and at high tide you see it from the dunes above instead.

Kayaking among the Cape fur seals at Pelican Point needs no experience and fills a morning. Living Desert drives go looking for the chameleons and lizards of the dune belt on the edge of town.

If three nights still feels like one too many, that night can go towards adding Etosha.

June to September is the window we recommend for every part of this route: clear skies, cool mornings on the dunes, and Damaraland's elephants and rhino keeping to the riverbeds and springs.

July to September is also the coolest stretch for tracking rhino on foot. Winter nights are cold, at times below freezing in the desert, and Swakopmund's mornings are foggy.

For photographers two other windows deserve a look.

April and May follow the rains: in-between months on most of this route, though May already has our top rating at the dunes, with green still in the landscape and air clearer of dust than later in the year.

December to March we rate as challenging here, for the heat and for rain that scatters the wildlife, but those months bring the storm clouds and rare showers that make the dunes look like nobody else's pictures.

By October the air is hazier and dustier, and the vegetation has lost its colour.

Easily, and Etosha is the obvious addition, because this route has desert wildlife but no big game park.

Two or three nights on a private reserve beside Etosha fit naturally after Damaraland, which is four to four and a half hours away by road or a short flight, and you return to Windhoek from there. To make room without lengthening the trip, take a night from Swakopmund.

Two things are better left alone. Onduli Ridge offers black rhino tracking only on a stay of three nights, so cutting Damaraland to two loses the rhino.

And Little Kulala's own gate into the park is the point of staying there, since most lodges outside the park start the day at the public gate at sunrise. Both places are small, with eleven and six suites, so dates from July to October need booking well ahead.

The first and last nights can be switched between lodges freely.