NAMIBIA, TRIPS OF A LIFETIME COVER: SMH traveller

SOMETIMES A JOURNEY ISN’T JUST PART OF THE EXPERIENCE, IT BECOMES THE EXPERIENCE, WRITES NINA KARNIKOWSKI.

Before I left for Namibia, people kept asking how well I knew my travelling companion. “You’re going to be in the car for hours,” they’d say. “Days, even.” I’d smile and nod, not mentioning that my “companion” was, in fact, a man I’d never met – my Namibian guide, Nestor – or that carsickness and I have history.

It turned out to be a fair question. Similar in size to NSW, but home to just over two million people, Namibia unfolds in vast, unbroken distances. The journey isn’t part of the experience, it is the experience.

And so, Nestor and I drove. At first, I did what I always do in cars and counted things: kilometres, hours, the number of remaining snacks. I attempted polite conversation, I checked my phone, I played music and podcasts. Somewhere along the way, though, time started to unspool and my usually chaotic thoughts along with it. Then the adventure really began.

On the Skeleton Coast, fog rolled in from the Atlantic, softening the edges of everything. Shipwrecks lay scattered along the shore, rusted and half-swallowed by sand, and seals barked in great, unruly colonies by the crashing sea. At one point, I wandered off for what I imagined would be a reflective solo walk, only to realise I was being followed by a jackal.

At Sossusvlei, we set out before dawn, just Nestor and I climbing one of the world’s tallest sand dunes in silence. A soft mist wrapped the towering apricot curves. By the time we reached the top, the rising sun was spilling light into the white pan far below, revealing the skeletal remains of petrified ancient trees.

Later, in a Himba settlement, I sat with a group of tribeswomen as they mixed ochre and butterfat into otjize paste, smoothing it over their skin as a kind of natural sunscreen. Children drifted in and out of the earthen huts, goats wandered past, and the women laughed and chatted together with a deep, unselfconscious ease. By most conventional measures, they owned very little. Yet, there was an undeniable richness to be found in their connection to each other and the earth. Sitting with them, I found myself recalibrating my own ideas of what a good life might look like, and what “enough” might really mean.

It was during those long hours in the car that that realisation came into focus. By the end of the trip, I wasn’t just tolerating the time on the road, I was cherishing it: the feeling of having nowhere to be but exactly where I was.

Bench Africa’s 11-day Highlights of Namibia itinerary includes Sossusvlei, the Skeleton Coast and Himba communities. From $10,650 a person. See benchafrica.com

This story first appeared in print below and online here