Namibia Fly and Drive Safari

Eleven nights across Namibia, tailor-made, combining self-drive with internal flights, with the UK flights included in the price.

The fly-and-drive arrangement is the point. Namibian distances are long enough that a fortnight spent entirely behind the wheel means several very long days, and flying the worst of the legs buys back time at the lodges.

Five camps and lodges are used, four of them Namibian-owned, and the choice is deliberate. Okonjima Nature Reserve supports the AfriCat Foundation’s leopard monitoring, cheetah rehabilitation and pangolin conservation, the last of which is among the most trafficked mammals in the world and one of the least studied. Ongava Game Reserve, on the southern boundary of Etosha, supports the Ongava Research Centre and a rhino reintroduction and monitoring programme. No day-by-day itinerary is published, since the trip is put together to order.

The UK flights, the domestic flights, the car hire and full-board accommodation are all included, which is unusual in this operator’s range and explains the price against the self-drive alternatives. The price shown is per person. The dry season from May to October is the window, when the game concentrates round the waterholes. No wildlife sighting can be promised, which applies as much to leopard at Okonjima as to rhino at Ongava. For anyone who would rather spend the budget on where they sleep than on how far they drive, this is the itinerary in the range that answers. Twelve days arranged this way gets a group to the far corners of a very large country without three consecutive days of gravel in between, and four of the five properties being Namibian-owned means the money stays closer to where it is spent.