Classic Safari 2027 (Namibia, Botswana, South Africa)

Twenty-seven nights from Swakopmund to Cape Town, a classic car endurance rally, 6,500 kilometres across three countries.

This is the operator’s first new African route in a decade and it is a serious undertaking: four weeks of gravel, sand and regularity sections in a car that may well be older than the roads.

Sossusvlei opens it, with a cake stop at Solitaire and sunrise over the dunes, then Windhoek by way of the Naukluft on Paris-Dakar-style sand. Etosha follows with a self-drive day through the park, which is malaria-free and where the salt pan is visible from space. Popa Falls comes next by Rundu and the Caprivi Strip, then Kasane and Chobe, where the elephant density is the highest anywhere. A flight reaches the Okavango Delta for a lodge stay and game drives, then the route runs south through Sabi Sands, the Transkei, where Nelson Mandela was born, and Shamwari, finishing over Chapman’s Peak to a gala at the V&A Waterfront.

Eligible cars run from pioneer pre-1920 through vintage and classic to pre-1985 4x4s by invitation; the detailed inclusions were not itemised on the operator’s page and are worth settling in writing given the price. The southern winter from May to October is the window. No wildlife sighting can be promised anywhere on the route, whatever the odds at Etosha or Chobe. Twenty-eight days at this level is the most expensive thing in this database and reads like it, and the length is the reason: four weeks of gravel in a pre-1985 car asks as much of the preparation beforehand as of the driving itself. Anyone considering it should budget for shipping the car both ways on top of the entry.