Namibia's Extreme Nature: Sossusvlei

Photo credit: Chad O'Hare

Leap down an eighty-five-metre sand dune before exploring an ashen clay pit peppered with petrified tree skeletons.

Where is this amazing destination? Namibia.

The sand slipped, grain by grain, sucking my feet back down towards the base of the giant dune. Even though the surroundings looked as if we had landed on another planet, the force of gravity confirmed otherwise. I leaned ahead and lifted my leg again, slowly pulling it up and forward to try to minimize backwards slippage. As I gradually gained headway up the sand, the panorama opened. Rolling mounds of sand spread out across the land, reminding me of the piles of cumin and saffron that filled baskets at Gujarati spice markets. The iron oxide had turned the sand a deep ochre colour, which caught the sun’s rays in subtly different nuances throughout the day. The sand at Sossusvlei was over five million years old...

​Excerpt from the Serene Scenes Chapter in Dust in My Pack

For further travel information: Our afternoon at Sossusvlei was part of a month-long camping tour with Geckos Adventures.

For information on the Sossusvlei sand dunes, petrified forest, accommodation and other useful information, refer to sossusvlei.org.

Photo credit: Chad O'Hare

Dust in My Pack includes more about these and other adventures across seven continents.
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​~ Available as an eBook and Paperback ~

Dust in My Pack