Namib Desert

Sossusvlei

The world's tallest dunes, painted in ochre and shadow

A sea of towering red dunes, ghostly clay pans and impossibly clear desert skies in the heart of the Namib.

Sossusvlei is the postcard of Namibia, a vast salt and clay pan ringed by some of the highest sand dunes on earth. Climb Dune 45 at dawn, walk the cracked white floor of Deadvlei among 900-year-old camel-thorn skeletons, and watch the desert glow at last light.

It is silence on a scale most travellers have never experienced, and endlessly photogenic.